


Lost in the Wind

by KRMalana



Series: Norsekink meme Fills [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Community: norsekink, Fluff and Angst, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, M/M, Mpreg, Original Character(s), Potential Dub-Con, loss of a child, potential kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:40:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 57,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KRMalana/pseuds/KRMalana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laufey once fell in love with a mortal.  A mortal he brought with him to Jotunheim and who fathered their children.  Three fine sons.  That was, until the youngest was taken in the war.  </p><p>Now, trying to keep Thor from his foolish impulses, Loki finds himself injured.  Injured, trapped on Jotunheim, and in the care of a strange man.  </p><p>A human with black hair and green eyes...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cadeyrn

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: http://norsekink.livejournal.com/11337.html?thread=26199113#t26199113  
> "TL;DR: Laufey fell in love with a mortal and brought them (perhaps even against their will) back to Jotunheim. It's up to the filler whether they were a man (in which case Laufey birthed Loki) or a woman (or even non-specifically male or female) but either way, this was Loki's other biological parent.
> 
> How Laufey managed to make his lover immortal/long-lived is also up for debate. Maybe he had access to the golden apples at the time (although this would imply just one apple would be needed) or is able to steal them, or some other power was used. Maybe the Casket's power did it somehow, and when it was taken it meant that Laufey's lover could not set foot out of Jotunheim, but anyway... use your imagination :)
> 
> I'm not fussed about what happens, but here's an idea:
> 
> When Loki first goes to Jotunheim, either before Thor's coronation to plot its interruption, or afterwards when he's with Thor and the W+4, he is injured and snatched by Laufey's guards. He comes to somewhere deep in the palace, where it's protected from the elements and actually warm. Someone is tending to his injuries. Loki notices that this person is clearly human, as their strength is no match for his. He/she has long black hair and green eyes, and Loki does not recognise their likeness with himself. Eventually maybe Laufey/Odin/Thor/everyone arrives and it all comes out. Loki has to deal with angst of situation, but at least he has people to talk to. 
> 
> I'd prefer that there wasn't any non-con involved with Laufey and his lover, but the dub-con elements of whether the lover actually wanted to stay in Jotunheim can be looked into. I'd actually like to see Laufey being very much in love with Loki's mother/father, and also that this be mutual. I just think it would be interesting.
> 
> Bonus:
> 
> * The loss of Loki was a devastating blow for Laufey and his lover, but Laufey always behaves coldly to save face.  
> * They were unable to have any more children for whatever reason. Maybe, if the human parent is a woman, this was due to birth complications, or even the same for Laufey, despite Loki being so small. Or maybe Idunn's apples do not do well for humans in the fertility department.  
> * But if filler wants, Loki could have other, older or younger siblings."

Darkness.

Loki was floating in darkness.  

He did not know where he was.  He did not know how he came to be here.  Where was even here?  He did not think, and dreams came and went.  When he tried to awake he only slid back into the semi awareness.  Instinct told him that he was not where he usually was.  Not… home…

There was someone with him.  Someone by his side.  Not here, in the darkness, but outside.  He could sense them.  He could hear them.  Gentle touches that numbed the pain.  Soft words that unraveled the tightening net of anxiety.  Humming.  Always humming a tune Loki did not know the words for and yet somehow knew the melody.  

Had he only arrived?  Or had he been here a long time? 

Washing in and out on the waves of consciousness, it took Loki some thought to realize that it was not his mother.  Nor was it one of her healers.  He did not know them.  So..who could it be…?

Loki opened his eyes to see who it was that cared for him.  Thor must be behind this.  Some stupid sparing idea or one more adventure gone wrong.  But when he saw them, he knew that all he had thought was not the case.  It all came rushing back.  The biting cold.  The looming shards of dark ice.  Trying to catch up as his brother and friends ran before him.  Using his magic to slow those who threatened him.  A blow, coming from no where.  Hands, falling on him, a blow to the head… then… then nothing…

He did not recognize the man that sat next to him.  It was easy to label him as such despite his long black hair.  There were small, intricate twists around his face that pulled back into a many stranded braid resting on the cascades.  The color contrasted almost sharply with his pale skin.  High cheekbones above a strong jaw almost hidden by the curves of his face until he smiled.  The same smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes that were a brilliant emerald.  They were bright and friendly, and yet hid a playful nature.  

“I see you’re awake now.  How you do feel?  You have been out a while…”  A hand reached out to touch him.  And Loki’s hand snapped up to meet it.  He yanked the man off the stool and halfway over the bed.  He was barely able to keep his balance.  The bones felt weak in his grasp.  That, and the curving shells of his ears revealed what Loki suspected.  That the man was merely a human.

And yet something flashed in the eyes before they narrowed.  The limp hand tightened into a fist.  He felt the strength spread down the arm past the wrist, the muscles firming around the bones.  He might not be able to pull back but Loki would not be able to pull him any further.  His own strength was leaving him, or at least that was what Loki told himself.  His arm fell back to his chest as he tried to blink away the black spots.  It hurt to breathe.  

The man hovered for a moment before sitting back on the stool.  Lessers might have left him entirely or moved out of range.  But not him.  His hands soothed his robes back into place over his knees.  “I apologize.  My movements were too sudden, especially from a stranger.”  The man smiled once more.  And it was not guarded.  “My name is Cadeyrn.”

Loki did not recognize the name.  Then again, he spent very little time on Midgard.  So he had no reason to.  Yet something tugged at what little he could sense in his state.  Why would he be on Midgard, among the humans?  The large room looked of much sturdier build than what he had seen.  Massive stones in the walls and a sturdy door, with a soaring ceiling that… seemed off.  A good fire in the hearth, warmth in the air.  A handful of bookcases packed with all sorts of books and records.  A wooden desk covered with many sorts of odds and ends.  

“I am Loki, of Asgard.  Prince, and son of Odin Allfather.”  Loki hissed in reply.  The pain along with the lack of control made him agitated.  The outburst left his chest heaving and his head swimming.  He sank back into the pillow.  The arm now lulled useless over his chest.

Cadeyrn didn’t even blink.  Who was he know that Loki, second prince of Asgard, would garner no reaction?  The stranger finally stood and moved to the fireplace, where he removed a kettle of warming water and poured it into a waiting cup.  A scent of plants and herbs hit the air as the tea brewed.  He finally returned to the bed, leaning over to help Loki drink.  “Here, this will help with the pain.”

There is not much Loki can do.  To refuse would be idiotic.  He is injured, and in pain, and will not be moving soon.  He will sleep.  He will recover.  And he will plan.  Whoever this human is, he is a fool to allow Loki to plan.

~*~*~

Loki continues to float in and out of consciousness.  Many times the strange man is there.  Sometimes he is not.  But he is nearby.  Loki hears his voice.  And at those times the voices of others join him.  Deep voices.  Rumbling voices.  Echoing despite the hushed and whispered tones.  

Cadeyrn tends to his wounds.  He is no healer, but he is skilled.  As he treats him, Loki takes stock of his injuries.  The worst seems to be a blow to his head.  It must have been what had taken him down and lead to blacking out.  There are more on his limbs; many scratches and minor bruises.  The last major injury, however, was around his chest.  Dark bruises.  As if he was picked up and squeezed.  Or tossed like some sort of doll.  

His superior Aesir healing should have been able to deal with it… if he could stay awake long enough.  He also knows there are no healing stones on him.  He had tossed his last to Fandral after the stabbing.  Cadeyrn must be some sort of herbalist since he used them frequently in the teas and poultices.  And then… then there are other things that lead Loki to suspect he is otherwise.

Especially now.  Cadeyrn thought him asleep again.  But Loki is not.  He is awake.  Listening and watching through eyes hardly open.  He sits once more beside the bed, bringing with him a bowl of clean water.  He quietly pulled Loki’s shirt up to expose the bruises on his chest.  Dipping his hand in the water, allowing some excess to drip back, he gently lays his warm hand against his skin.  He moves over him, pressing and yet barely touching.  Distinct movements.  Long sided circles with alternating pressures.  The pain immediately subsides and the skin thrums with healing.  He can feel it, so faint to be nearly nonexsistant, but there are flickers of magic there. 

There are other instances.  Sparks over a newly stocked fire… Moving objects just out of reach to his hand…  His own magic reacting to the little specks in him, trying to feed on them to grow stronger…

But whatever tiny magics this human had, they would be of no assistance to him once Loki regains his strength.

~*~*~

“Why do you tend to him?”

Cadeyrn paused in his work of parceling out the medicines to look up at his husband.  “Because I need to.  He was injured.”

The blue mountain shrugged its massive peaks.  “That is his consequence.  He attacked, thus, he was injured.  He should be down in the dungeon.”

“Where he could grow worse?  And where Odin could find more reason against us?”  Cadeyrn gently pointed out.  

His husband and mate was not moved by his reason.  He stood, impassive.  Then came a soft gentling.  A large knuckle swept over his cheek and the human leaned into the touch.  “If anything were to happen to you…” Laufey whispered quietly.  The tiniest of admissions.  The ghost of frost on the wind.  

A soft smile, a tiny smile, answers him.  “I can handle him if need be…” A sadness tinted the human’s eyes and he looked away.  Down at his hands. “But harming him would do no good.  We… we never found his body… perhaps someone took him and raises him well… taking care of him…”  He can say no more and does not have to.  After all this time, both Laufey and Cadeyrn know of what he speaks.  A strong hand turns and presses his precious human to his chest.

Silently mourning the child they had lost.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really really need to post chapters to older things or finish them before starting new ones... but I made the mistake of going back to older rounds on the Nosekink meme and kept finding things! I know some people don't like them, but I've always liked original characters. That's how I got into writing as a young child, writing characters for my favorite movies or anime or game. 
> 
> Plus, I think this was the first Laufey/original character I've come across.
> 
> I am going a certain direction with the prompt since the prompter left it pretty open/gave a lot of ideas.


	2. Chapter 2

“Where are we?”

Cadeyrn turned at the demand.  Loki was well enough to sit up now.  And to move about the room when he wasn’t there.  He knew.  Papers or herbs moved slightly on his desk, or books tilted differently in the bookcase.  Cadeyrn couldn’t help the little chuckle that bubbled up in his throat  “You haven’t figured it out?”

The young prince glared.  And he looked exactly like Helblindi looked as a teenager.  Or like his own spoiled brothers.  Cadeyrn made no answer other than to point upwards at the ceiling high overhead.  Loki’s eyes followed.  What now?  He had stared at the enough stuck here in the bed.  It was a strange substance that was solid and yet didn’t appear so.  It seemed highly polished on the surface, but somehow the material beyond it could be seen.  Blue… white…

“Ice…?”

“Jotunheim.”

Loki’s eyes snapped back to the human.  He had suspected his location at first.  But how could it be?  It was warm here.  He had not seen another frost giant since he had awakened.  And Cadeyrn.  A human.  What was a human doing here?

“You would dare hold me?!  Do you know what my father would do to get me back?”

The human grinned and a light sparked in his green eyes.  “I can think of a few things.  However, you might recall that you attacked us.  After a sudden and rude visit.”

Loki almost retorted that it was Thor’s fault.  And if anyone should be here, it was him.  Then again, they were bothers.  This is what he got for trying to teach the fool a lesson and then keep him alive.  As he thought, he realized that being confrontational wasn’t working on the human.  He just stood with a maddening smile tugging one cheek.

Loki bowed his head, playing the repentant.  “I’m… sorry.  It’s just that… I’ve never been a prisoner before…”  He would need this human to plain his escape.  He needed many plans in place to deal with what might happen.  Most likely, Laufey would be using him as a bargaining chip.  Or to add to the threat against Asgard as proof that the two princes had indeed attacked him.  Father would come for him.  He wouldn’t leave him here.  But he could take care of himself and let himself out.  If he escaped, or became ‘lost’, Odin could use that to his advantage.

I’d gotten that hint you’d never been a prisoner… Cadeyrn had to bite back the comment.  While Laufey loved his swift tongue, there were a few times that it wasn’t for the better.  He didn’t need to antagonize the young prince.  He was doing that well enough on his own.  “They hold you captive as well?”  Cadeyrn blinked in surprise at the question.  What had given him that idea?

“No, and neither are you.  The guards were a little rough when they caught you.  We thought it best to treat you here.  Can’t have you freezing down in the dungeon.”  He watched Loki raise his head in surprise.  As he watched he could see the mind working behind the green eyes.

‘…you attacked us…’ ‘ …we thought it best…’ The human wasn’t a fellow prisoner.  A fellow captive sent to take care of him.  “You’re one of them!”

“Ah, there’s the cleverness spoken of Asgard’s second prince.”  Cadeyrn turned, as if the information was the simplest thing in the world.  But there was something in his eyes.  A knowledge that he had not told Loki everything.  His mind whirled.  A human that worked with the frost giants?  Had they not tried to take over their home realm of Midgard before the war, as his father had said?  From then on Loki watched him.  To find out just what the human could be hiding.

~*~*~

Loki grew in strength as he recovered.  He had still not seen anyone else besides Cadeyrn.  Where could they be?  It was warm.  And it was protected from the elements.  He couldn’t hear the wind nor smell the crisp snow.  Yet Cadeyrn had mentioned the dungeon, as if they were already in the palace.  How could that be?

He could not argue that he wasn’t well cared for.  Cadeyrn tended his injuries.  He kept him well fed as well.  Admittedly, it wasn’t the enormous feasts he was used to avoiding.  The food was simple and without much variety, but it was filling.  Loki had also begun to suspect that this place was Cadeyrn’s room, and he rested in the human’s bed.  Yet that too was its own mystery.  He had not seen Cadeyrn sleep and there were periods of time where he wasn’t in the room.  Where did he go?

The curiosity got the better of him.  He wouldn’t admit it, and went with two other factors.  He was recovering; and he needed to start plotting a way out of this place.  The door was never locked.  So it was an open invitation to open it and see beyond. Cadeyrn had been gone for an hour or so.  That should give him plenty of time to sneak around. 

Loki simply wasn’t prepared for what lay beyond it.

The door was open and yielded under his hand.  A dungeon.  A cave.  The bare open elements protected by the rocks.  Those were all things he thought could lay beyond.  Yet what was there drew him out with wondering eyes and exposed steps.  A wide cavern with a high ceiling.  The air was clean and warm.  It was obvious they were under the ice as it made up the roof and some of the walls.  It looked highly smoothed and polished.  It was done purposely to allow as much light as possible to filter down.  Plants.  There were plants everywhere in the cavern.  Cadeyrn moved among them.  Watering, harvesting, checking on their growth and development.  He was consumed by it enough that he did not notice Loki for several minutes.  

When he did he stood upright.  “You’re up!  Feeling better?”  He worked his way down pathways laid between the sections.

“Is this your garden?”  He had never heard of anything growing on Jotunheim.  Always a frozen, barren wasteland.  Cadeyrn nodded.  He looked back over the plants as he tucked a wayward black lock behind his ear.  “I guess you could call it that.  It’s probably more of an experiment.”

He motioned for Loki to follow him.  So the young man did.  It was a fully functioning garden, complete with its own spring that bubbled out of the rocks.  As they moved about Loki noticed one thing:  every plant had a purpose.  There were many herbs and plants used in medicines or healing.  The rest produced a type of food or seed.  If he were growing it for that purpose he must not be feeding very many.  Yet Loki could also see how it would be an experiment, especially in one corner of the garden.  Two plots were set up with identical plants.  The only difference was the appearance of the soil.  He snuck a glance at the small signs in each next to the path.  ‘Ash-soil’ one read, and ‘glacier-soil’ on the other, both in the same neat hand.  

“Why?”  Loki asked.  It seemed a lot of work.  And for what gain?  

“Because there is not much else I can do…”  Cadeyrn answered softly.  He crouched by a chamomile bush in one of the gardens.  He gently checked its growth as he spoke.  “When the Casket was taken, much of the vitality of the realm went with it.  Not much grows on the surface anymore.  It doesn’t survive well.”  There was no pleading in his words.  And yet too there was no accusation.  He simply pointed it out to the outsider.

“So, that’s it.  You hold me hostage to get your precious Casket back.  It’s your own punishment for trying to invade another realm.”  Loki twisted Cadeyrn’s own early words against him.

When Cadeyrn looked at him, Loki fell silent.  There was no anger in his face.  Yet there was a hard set to his eyes and the press of his mouth.  Muscles tightened in the human’s forearms, then relaxed.  He stood to his height until he was eye-to-eye with the Asgardian prince.  “You do not know the whole story.  And an entire realm should not be made to suffer for what you think a few did.”  

~*~*~

No matter how much Loki tried to pry the meaning from Cadeyrn, the man was silent.  What could he mean?  Jotunheim had invaded Midgard, the human realm.  Asgard, as the high realm, had gone to protect them and ended the war after chasing the frost giants back and locking them in their own realm.  Granted, Loki was born shortly before the end of the war, but he had heard about it from those who lived it and the records kept of it.

As much as Loki loathed his current state, he found himself looking forward to Cadeyrn’s visits.  The man was knowledgeable and quick.  Before, Loki had not met anyone quick enough to answer his cleverness.  Cadeyrn came close.  Often the human would answer him right back with his own riddles or woven thoughts.  He presented a companion of the like Loki had not had in Asgard.

Plus, he needed to win Cadeyrn over to his side.  

Which might have been easy if the frost giants had not started to show up.

They had been out in the garden.  Cadeyrn harvesting some herbs while Loki bantered with him from a particularly sunny patch.  There was a vibration in the ground beneath him.  And that was the only warning Loki had for the jotun already halfway across the garden.  He had no daggers so the prince reached for his magic.  He was tall and slimly muscular, dressed only in a loincloth-skirt.  Bands raced up and down his strong arms.  Horns curled out of the black hair drawn back into a short tail.  Cadeyrn looked to the jotun and smiled brightly.  “Helblindi!”

“Father.”  The jotun answered respectfully.  The human came to greet him.  The man barely came to his waist.  Yet Helblindi stooped to greet him.  In the split moment before they met, the red eyes flicked to Loki and swore to crush his skull.  Then the two butted heads before Cadeyrn threw his arms about the thick neck in a hug.

“I am glad you’ve returned whole and safe,” a hand lingered on the jotun’s cheek as Cadeyrn briefly checked him over.  When he saw he was alright he gave another brilliant smile.  “How did it go?”

“Well,” Helblindi answered.  “I shall tell you on the way.”  He held out a dark blue cloak that had been draped over his arm.  It was lined with white fur and fashioned in Cadeyrn’s size.  It had long sleeves and fastens down the front to bind it.  The jotun gently held Cadeyrn’s long black hair out of the way as he worked on the fastens.

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be,” Cadeyrn addressed Loki, “I started a stew for you on the fire.  You can walk the garden if you wish.”  He turned back to the jotun.  “I’ll go gather my things.”

Loki and Helblindi stared at each other.  No words were spoken.  Helblindi knew he was a prisoner and showed it.  The icy stance spoke that if he tried anything he wouldn’t hesitate to crush him.  Loki only smiled wickedly in return.  Let them think him weak.  How many frost giants had he taken down before his capture?  The stare-down finally ended when Cadeyrn returned, juggling a heavy chest and writing instruments in his arms.  Without a word the jotun took it from him and with a nod from the human the two left.

Loki made sure to note which direction they took to leave.

~*~*~

“So that is one of Asgard’s princes,” Helblindi rumbled.  Within moments he felt a hand on one of his horns.  He knew it would tug and as he guessed, it did.  “Do not get any ideas of fighting with him.”

Helblindi growled lowly.  Because his sire knew exactly what he was thinking.  He was too good at things like that.  Cadeyrn only chuckled from his perch on his eldest’s shoulder.

“He looks like you…”

Cadeyrn quieted.  His son had spoken aloud what he had thought since Loki first arrived.  But it was something he fought to overlook.  Otherwise the other thoughts and memories would bloom like hope only to be ripped once more.  “I am not the only one in all the Nine Realms who could have black hair and green eyes…”

“Father-King said that once, when you held him, Loptr changed and resembled you.  That his skin turned pale and his eyes like emeralds…”  It was a foolish thing to bring up.  But the arrival of the Aesir, the arrival of someone who resembled his father, had upset the household.  He could feel it, even though he had only recently returned.  The loss of his youngest sibling was ever present in the family.  If the Aesir had just left a body, his parents would not have to suffer the possibility of his fate.  His dam, Laufey-King, never showed the pain in public.  He could not.  So it was Father who showed the sadness and the pain.

And the danger this Aesir represented only added to the worry.  The two sons of Odin had attacked them.  And now one was their prisoner.  But would Odin honor the rights of their realm?  Or would he once more take and take?  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it helps: Father/sire refers to Cadeyrn, and Father-King/dam refers to Laufey; its playing with the family ties I think Jotun might have, and how they might protect it considering that the enemy is near/might be looking in. Like how many realms know that Laufey has two sons, but don't know their names or that there was a third. 
> 
> And I will eventually include bits/flashbacks of how Laufey and Cadeyrn met and fell in love later on.


	3. Quen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, there's some PWP between Laufey and Cadeyrn in the middle of the chapter. Its to show their bond, buts its also plain smex time. Plus, this is a kink meme fill, so there are kinks as well.
> 
> Also if it seems to cut off at the end. Yes, it kinda does. But the chapter was getting too long so the end of this part is int he next chapter.

Cadeyrn had returned several hours later from whatever he went to do.  The chest had returned empty and a page filled with notes.  The human had then spent the rest of the time making concoctions that went back into the chest.  Loki bothered him, growing bored from the time alone.  There was a lengthy game of riddles before Loki slipped off to sleep.  He had awakened once during the night, dreams of ice and screams and a song in his ear, he saw that Cadeyrn had not left.

He had fallen asleep at the desk, head on his arms in the work.  Curiosity on what he was doing drew him to the desk.  He had no idea how the blanket moved off his bed and onto the human’s shoulders.

It was a short time later that the second jotun appeared.  This one had no way of sneaking up on them like Helblindi could.  His footsteps were heavy and his movements obvious.  Despite the door between them, Loki eyed it wearily as it approached.  Cadeyrn only smiled and went to open at the door at the heavy knock.  The massive thing filled the doorway and beyond.  It made a loud rumbling when it caught sight of the human.  Right before it snatched him up in one pair of arms.  Loki leapt from his chair, scrambling to find a weapon.

The Cadeyrn laughed.

“Byleistr!  Byleistr! That tickles.”  The man said, hands scratching at the corner of the thing’s jaw.  It rumbled happily and continued to nuzzle Cadeyrn’s chest and stomach.  The entire creature was thick with massive muscles.  It was hunched over so it was hard to judge its height.  What was stranger was the thick growth on the forehead and back of the skull like a bull, and the fact he had four arms.  One set was holding a large, stuffed bag to his stomach and the second held the human.

The thing finally set Cadeyrn down.  Still laughing, he motioned to Loki.  “Byleistr, this is Loki.  He was hurt and I’m looking after him.  Loki, this is Byleistr, my second son.”

“Your…son?”  The idea is too horrible to comprehend.  That…thing was someone’s child?  The human had actually fathered children among the Jotun?  He had not made the connection with the one called Helblindi.  While he had used the term father when greeting Cadeyrn he had not thought it used as a familial connection.

Cadeyrn nodded.  He looked at Loki strangely with one hand on Bylesitr’s arm.  The realization shocked Loki.  It was the same look on Frigga’s face when anyone dared say something against her children.  Fierce.  Protective.  Cadeyrn must have come to some decision for he turned out into the garden.  “Can you carry it there for me, Byleistr?”  He indicated the corner of the garden where he ran his ‘experiments’.  Beyond the test gardens were a few rings of stone.  Loki had thought them wells, but now that they drew close he saw them empty.

Byleistr held the great bag low enough for Cadeyrn to untie the top.  The jotun poured its contents into the stone well until it was filled.  With growing excitement Cadeyrn scooped up the substances and ran it between his fingers.  “Oh, I almost didn’t believe it!  This is fine, fine indeed!  Look Byleistr,” the thing drew closer and Cadeyrn set the substance in his hand.  “This is earth; feel how soft it is.”

Byleistr rumbled softly, eyes on the dark grey-brown earth.  He rubbed it between his fingers.  “Where I come from, this is everywhere on the land.  Many, many things grow of it, like the plants I grow.  Here, it comes from the rocks.  The slow pressure and power of the ice wears the stone down until it is small and fine, like this,” Cadeyrn allowed the dirt to fall back, “We need it for the saplings which should arrive within a day or two.  Then perhaps…”  The human trailed off, looking at the wells and the garden.

Byleistr set the dirt back, almost respectfully.  He then set his head against Cadeyrn’s and rubbed…while purring very much like a cat.  There was nothing Loki could say of the display.  He was very much thankful for the interruption in the form of a knock at the entrance to the cavern.  Another jotun, garbed as a palace guard, appeared.  “Laufey-King wishes to seek you, Cadeyrn-Quen.”

“I will be but a moment,” Cadeyrn called to him.  He stood from the well and wiped his hands on his robes.  “I must leave for now.  But perhaps Byleistr would like to visit with you, Loki.”  Cadeyrn looked hopeful at the suggestion.  The creature, however, grew agitated before trying to… hide behind Cadeyrn.  It was ineffectual considering his size.  “He’s a bit shy…” the human offered.

“That is… alright,” Loki replied, eyes on the jotun.  “I would not want to… press you, Byleistr.”  There.  Let the human think he was relenting, trying to see things in a new light.  He watched Cadeyrn leave and Byleistr with him.

So did Laufey finally decide what to do with his captive?

~*~*~

Laufey looked up at the familiar, soft tread of his mate.  Cadeyrn whisked into their rooms after closing the door behind him.  Excitement lights up his face and soon a mischievous grin graced his lips.  Now, here, alone, Laufey allowed himself to relax and smile in turn.  “You won’t believe it, Laufey!  Byleistr just brought me the earth the eastern diggers found.  It’s marvelous!  With the glacier plot growing nearly identical to the normal plot I truly think this might work!  I’ll have to try more, it wouldn’t do to falsely raise hopes, but if this is it and there is enough of it, we could start soon!”

Laufey chuckled as he delicately grasped the human and brought him close.  “There is no doubt it will, my clever one.”  Cadeyrn’s eyes flutter at the praise and he cannot help but to kiss him.  He can feel Cadeyrn’s words waiting to burst out, but they settle as he drew close.  The warm arms came about his neck.  The hands fell where they always did:  one rubbing the top of his spine and the other at the secret spot at the base of his skull.  They draw back reluctantly for air and simply gaze at each other.

Laufey had never seen eyes like Cadeyrn’s that held so much to discover.

But it is not why he had stolen his mate away.  He sets him on his thigh.  Cadeyrn’s hands instinctively lower with him and slide to the jotun’s pectoral.  He watched the emerald eyes widen in surprised realization.  A shiver runs up Laufey’s spine as the deliciously warm hand pressed over him.  Feeling the too firm skin, seeing how the nipple is dark and hard.  He presses near the too full duct and the milk bursts, squirting over his face and torso.  Cadeyrn looks up at him, the pink tongue darting out to chase a white bead.  “Why didn’t you tell me you were so full?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry?” Laufey countered, voice deepening.  Cadeyrn lowered his eyes, sheepish and bashful.  “There is so much to concern you right now… I did not want to burden you…” Laufey knows the reason is wise, but he cannot take it right now.  He presses Cadeyrn closer to the firm nipple, not caring the leaking milk soaks his robes.  He’ll be removed of them soon anyway.

Cadeyrn tries to kneel on his love’s thigh to gain better access, but Laufey is ahead of him.  The strong arms lift and support him so he can draw as close as he can.  The first few times they had done this, Cadeyrn had resented it.  It made him feel like an infant and not like the man he was.  Yet the more he had grown comfortable, both with his new home and with his lover who was male and not, and after the Casket’s loss, he enjoyed it.  He had to gulp the first few mouthfuls but soon it was a steady flow with his nursing.  HE could feel Laufey shuddering with pleasure against him.  The only time Laufey had been this full with milk was the hours after Loptr was born.

When the Casket was taken, the realm’s vitality seemed to go with it.  Soon it had grown colder and wilder.  Things struggled to grow and food slowly became scarce.  Laufey had witnessed how Cadeyrn would rather go hungry than risk Helblindi and Byleistr, their two remaining children, not get enough to eat.  That was when Laufey had suggested the milk from his breast.  His body did not know that Loptr was gone, either dead or stolen.  Surely he could try to feed his mate and sire of his children.  The plan had, blessedly, worked.  Cadeyrn was fed, and grew stronger despite the lack of the Casket.  His love would not grow old and die, he soon discovered.  Despite being human, he was of Jotunheim now.  He would hold on, just as the realm did without the Casket of Ancient Winters.

Cadeyrn could never risk leaving Jotunheim, however.  

Cadeyrn drew back, softly panting to catch his breath.  He lapped at the nipple, rolling it gently with his tongue until the beads of milk stopped.  Laufey switched him t the other side, not missing the plotting look on the human’s face.  He did not latch on with his mouth.  Instead, he pressed against the skin with his hand, knowing full well the milk would burst forth.  He opened his mouth to catch the stream, not caring if some of it soaked his hair or shoulders.  The pink tongue lapped at it greedily, licking his cheeks or fingers.  The green eyes watched Laufey even as he finally nursed at the second breast.  And the green eyes were wicked.

Laufey purred deep in his throat with pleasure.  Both in relief at the flowing milk and of the closeness of his mate.  One hand strayed down Cadeyrn’s body and slipped beneath the robes.  The human eagerly spread his legs, allowing him to work against the flimsy undergarments.  They soon opened, allowing him to caress the soft flesh of his ass and the searing get of his entrance.  Cadeyrn moaned, sucking harder, the entrance puckering wantonly at his touch.  One burning look and Laufey knew Cadeyrn wanted it too.

The hand left, but only for a moment.  He rid himself of the loincloth, freeing the half hard cock.  He delved between his own legs to the dripping cunt.  He pushed inside, just a moment, wetting his fingers to slickness.  Cadeyrn keened as the hand returned to rub the entrance slick before slowly pushing inside.  Cadeyrn’s hands grasped for something to do, pushing and kneading at the muscles.

Cadeyrn had to stop drinking for a moment lest he choke.  The cool digit felt thick and wonderful.  Yet it only made him wanting and greedy.  He knew all the things that came after.  There was soon a steady rhythm, him nursing to draw the milk and Laufey’s finger pumping inside of him.

He switched suckling between the nipples as Laufey slowly opened him up.  The milk itself was a pleasure.  The taste was like nothing he had ever had. It was so filling that he needed to eat little else.  And the feel of Laufey under his lips and tongue.  His hands curled over the chest, contented sighs coming from his nose when it wasn’t a moan.  They Laufey began to remove his robes.

Cadeyrn relaxed into his hands, licking at his lips and watching him with half-lidded eyes.  The same hands that could snap him like a twig gently manipulated him with the greatest of care.  He shivered at air suddenly over his body, and his raging cock.  He keened, arching into the hand at his back, as a thick finger stroked it.  One look between them, into the red eyes, and Cadeyrn nodded. The hands continued to hold him delicately as the thick cock pressed against him.  Soon his whole world was that delicious, cool, length.

Once he was fully sheathed inside Laufey stopped to allow his mate to adjust.  Cadeyrn curled over his belly, sides heaving with his pants.  He carefully pulled a fur blanket from the bed and draped it over his human so he would not grow too cold.  This was the side of Cadeyrn only he saw.  Naked, curled over the belly that carried his children, hair wild, and cloaked by a skin his mate had provided.  He leaned back for a better angle once Cadeyrn began to move against him.  He laid his hands over the human’s straining thighs.  It allowed him to thrust upwards and also permit Cadeyrn to lord over his own movements.

They moved together, a rhythm reached without time.  Their skin, their sounds, their breaths melded until they were one.  Here was Cadeyrn’s love, here was Laufey’s love.  It was a bond that had weathered a war.  It was a love that had birthed three children into the waking world.  And it was relationship that had kept Jotunheim alive despite all the losses.  When Cadeyrn came it was a delicious burn across his stomach and chest.  And when Laufey came the cool seed filled him just as the life-milk filled his belly.  Laufey let the entrance suck in his finger, allowing Cadeyrn to adjust back while keeping in the seed.

Once Cadeyrn could move, he curled up on Laufey’s chest, head tucked under his chin.  The fur covered one side and their bare skin connected on the other.  The king sleepily stroked the black waves of hair.  Glancing down he could see the blue lines already shimmering under Cadeyrn’s pale skin.  They resembled the lines of family that were present when a frost giant was born, and the carvings that would be added when two mated.  They were never quite sure what caused them since Cadeyrn was a human.  He had once naughtily whispered that while his seed gave Laufey children, Laufey’s seed changed his body so everyone would know who claimed him.  Good.  Tomorrow’s visitors would know to stop looking at his mate so lecherously.  

~*~*~

When Laufey awoke it was because he body sung with pleasure.  His cock is raging and hard.  His cunt is wet and pulsing as something pounds in him.  A slick fist is in his second entrance, fingering the bud inside him.

Shivering with pleasure, Laufey looks down between his legs.  Cadeyrn is there, eyes ready to catch his.  His mouth is on the head of his cock and his body rubs against it as he moves.  His other hand is at his balls, pushing and rolling.  He leans against one of Laufey’s legs which is bent over him and pressing at his back.  Others might wonder how someone so small would be able to satisfy him, with a cunt the size for other frost giants.  But all he’s ever wanted is his human.  He’s smooth and long, a burning heat inside him like nothing he’s ever had.  It closes around him and milks him.

Cadeyrn spills inside him and it is hot and glorious.  The pleasure is so consuming that Laufey can barely make a sound as he cums.  Their pants fill the air.  Cadeyrn is absolutely covered with his seed, inside and out.  The whiteness is dripping down his pale skin and even speckled in his dark hair.  He appears a god, a gift of favour from Ymir, emerged from the newly fallen snow.  And so Laufey worships him.

He catches Cadeyrn up and brings him to his mouth.  He laps at the pale body with his tongue.  It cleans the newly spent seed over the front of his body and the seed of the night before from his entrance.  Cadeyrn hardens again and cums in his mouth, a delicious treat sliding down his throat.  “You’ll need a bath,” Laufey chuckles as the human pants on his chest.  

“I just had one…” he whines, running a hand through his hair.  He can’t help laughing softly at the expression on Laufey’s face.  The look that he’ll chase him down like one of their sons refusing the bath and dunk him in the water.  He laughs again as he leans down and kisses his king and mate.  “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

~*~*~

Loki hears that Cadeyrn has arrived, and sees that he is only making to leave again.  His robes have changed, a bit finer and with delicate embroidery.  Then there is the same dark blue cloak lined with the white fur.  He retrieves the chest and his writing materials, talking to himself as he keeps track of things.  Loki keeps to the shadows.  Cadeyrn is thinking of other things and has not thought to speak to his captive.  He will follow him out, see where he goes, begin to map out the palace and find a way out.  

Byleistr is with him again.  He follows close behind, with his mouth pressed tight and looking a bit perturbed.  He carries a comb in one hand, dwarfed by his size.  He finally growls at the human and he stops.  “Oh!  Sorry…”  Cadeyrn apologizes and stands still.  He still keeps himself busy as he looks over the written list from last time.  

Loki watches as Byleistr runs the comb skillfully through Cadeyrn’s black hair.  He is surprisingly swift and yet gentle.  Soon the hair is like black silk and all four hands begin to work at it.  The intricate twists and braids Loki has seen before are soon in place.  Each set by Byleistr's purposeful hand.  The creature smiles in pride, finally patting his father on the shoulder to let him know it was done.  It is then, when Cadeyrn turns to kiss his son on the cheek, that Loki sees them.  Physically, one might be able to see the blue lines underneath the pale skin.  But with his magic the lines shimmer and jump to Loki’s eyes.  He realizes he has seen them before so faintly he had not consciously considered them.  

Byleistr carries the chest while Cadeyrn walks beside him.  The human talks to him softly, but of nothing of importance to Loki.  They leave the cavern and follow a hallway.  For a long time he thinks them alone until he realizes he has not truly looked into the shadowy niches carved in the icy walls.  It is good he has shielded himself with his magic.  Otherwise he would have walked straight into the horde of frost giants that are set to guard the hallway.  So far there is only one place that it leads back to:  the cavern.  Is it the captive that Laufey has there?  Is it the garden?  Or is it the human that is so fiercely guarded?  

The large hallway finally splits and leads into other directions.  Now that they have reached it, Loki sees that the crumbling and crude walls once resembled something.  A building, a palace that might have rivaled Asgard in its magnificence.  So, he truly has been deep within the heart of the palace this entire time.  The more they have moved away from it the colder the air has become.  Inside, protected, it is not so bad from the howling wind and biting cold he had faced when he and Thor first arrived.  But he still has to cover his hands and consider how he could warm himself with his magic if need be.  

The two arrive to a large, inner chamber.  It is obviously not the way out, and he should use the chance to find a way, but his curiosity gets the better of him.  It is a type of audience chamber, with a seat crafted from stone sitting atop a dais with steps leading down to the floor.  There could only one person the stone could have been made for, for it is too small to sit any frost giant.  Helblindi waits besides the seat that has been laid with a thick fur.  There is no one else in the room and it is plain that the two frost giants know it.  The elder son has something of a smile on his face and leans to butt heads with his father and brother.  It is plain to see that they are family, for they spoke softly with a familiarity that left Loki confused but they knew of what they spoke.  The papers are handed to Helblindi and Byleistr keeps the chest by his feet.  Cadeyrn settles on the seat.  He breathes in, once, hands folded on his lap, then nods to his eldest.  

“You are now permitted audience.”  Helblindi’s voice booms over the room.  Loki quickly moved behind a pillar where he could hear and see everything.  A lock is released on the wide doors on the other side of the chamber and two guards entered.  They flanked either side of the door, with another pair on the outside.  Loki can see that more frost giants are waiting in another room outside and only one is permitted.  Loki starts when he realizes he recognizes the scene:  it is exactly the same as the audiences his father Odin Allfather granted to the public.  The Jotun were civilized enough to hold such things?

The frost giant moves to the foot of the stairs and bows his head in respect.  “Cadeyrn-Quen.  I have come from the Western Sea with my report.”  With a nod from the human the jotun reported on the movements of creatures along the shore of the sea.  From what Loki could gather the primary concern was a type of fish.  While it had not been sighted, there were signs that it was migrating towards them.   When he was finished Cadeyrn nodded his thanks and the jotun left.

Another entered after him, with a smaller and younger jotun in return.  The adult knelt before the dais, head bowed until it touched the stairs.  The teenager stared at the human with wide eyes until his father tugged him down.  “Cadeyrn-Quen.  I beg for your aid.  My mate!  He is sick…”  The jotun’s voice trembled with worry.

Cadeyrn leaned forward.  “What are the symptoms?”  

The jotun listed them, telling the human everything he could think of.  Cadeyrn listened closely with Helblindi recording the information.  Once he had finished Cadeyrn gave a gentle smile.  “Do not worry.  I’ve heard and dealt with this sickness before.”  He motioned for the chest and selected a thick packet of one of his herbal concoctions.  “Take this to him.  It will lessen the cough, allowing him to breathe and get the rest he needs to get better.  It’s made into a tea to be taken every few hours.”  Cadeyrn rose from the seat and brought it to the jotun.  He indicted a piece of paper folded and tucked under the ties.  “All the instructions are written here.  When he gets better let me know when you can.  But if he does not get better within a few days, or worsens, summon me immediately.”

“Thank you…” the jotun thanked him.  Was he truly blinking tears away?

“My… my dam will get better?”  The teenager asked softly.  Cadeyrn turned to him and smiled kindly.  “With this I hope he will.  Others who were sick with the same before have taken this and gotten better.  Every sickness  can be different, but I’ll try my very best.”  Without warning the teen stepped forward and wrapped the human in a hug that took him off his feet.  The father paled, whispering harshly at his son to put the quen down and even the guards swayed in their positions.  Cadeyrn waved them off, laughing and patting the youngster on his arm as he set him down.  “It’s alright.”  Bowing once more, the father whisked his child from the room.  

Cadeyrn sat back on the seat and audiences continued.  Many of cases were the same as the second.  Jotuns were sick or had suffered an injury.  What advice could Cadeyrn give them?  What should be done?  With most of the cases the human already had a medicine ready to go in the chest which he gave freely to the petitioner.  If it was a difficult case, or something that Cadeyrn had not dealt with, he would take all the details down and promise to bring them something the next day.  It was much like the people who came to his own mother Frigga at times.

But then there were some very different audiences.  Some turned out as a type of report, frost giants bringing him news from different parts of the realm.  Loki slowly realized that Cadeyrn had a system of eyes and ears over the realm, bringing him information, much like the one Loki secretly had in place in Asgard.  But why?  And what could he do with such news?  Then there were those who must have come to a previous audience and had a good outcome, for they brought him gifts.  They paled in comparison to the magnificent things people brought to Odin, but Cadeyrn accepted them nonetheless if he could not persuade them otherwise.  

And then Loki saw his first giantess, and his first jotun infant.  

The couple entered into the chamber, the male’s arm around the female.  She was just as tall as he and resembled most frost giants.  She was less rough, however, and softer at the edges.  Her hair was white and long and wore something like a shirt along with the loincloth.  She carried something in her arms wrapped in furs.  

“We just had to bring her to you.  For you to see.”  She spoke.  Cadeyrn rose and stood on the top step so he was closer to their height.  The human made a soft sound as she parted the fur to reveal the tiny thing swaddled there.  It was soft and chubby, like a baby, only its skin was blue and had a fuzz of white hair like the mother.

“How old is she?”

There was a murmur between the guards at the revelation that the infant was female.  Loki could see why when he thought about it.  Besides the giantess, Loki had never heard of nor seen a female jotun.  “Two days, Cadeyrn-Quen.”

“May I?”  At the request the parents nodded and settled the newborn in his arms.  He seemed dwarfed in comparison.  Cadeyrn immediately began bouncing and rocking her, smiling like a fool down at her.  “Hello there.  Ah!  Big eyes.  Oh, I remember when my boys were this little.  Sweet tiny babies.”  The parents smiled at the attention shown to their baby, and at how the little hand waved against the human’s cheek.  He leaned his cheek against her and he whispered something softly to her.  Then he kissed her forehead before holding her out to her parents.  “Thank you.”

“No, my Quen.  Thank you.   For it is the both of you that have given hope that Jotunheim is still a place to bring a child into the world.”  The couple bowed their heads and Cadeyrn nodded back.  

At their departure another pair of jotun, both male, entered the chamber.  They each carried a box; one large and the other small.  Cadeyrn did not bother to return to his seat.  There was a sudden eagerness to his face.

“Cadeyrn-Quen.  I have brought a sample of the dirt we have unearthed beneath the glaciers of the Black Spine.”  The box contained the same boring earth that Byleistr had delivered the other day, only differing in color.  “It’s the biggest we’ve uncovered so far from what I’ve heard of the others.  I believe it is enough to move earth to the other locations while digging out a cavern large enough to work in later.  And then there is this.”  The frost giant waved the other forward and opened the lid of the presented box.

Blue stones in various shades, most towards the paler side, shimmered in the light.  They looked strange.  As if they were newly broken and rough.  Cadeyrn, however, knew immediately what they were by the change in his face.  He took out a stone half the size of his thumb and held it to the light.  “We struck a vein of these while digging.  While we can’t be sure how large it could be, it is a good size from what is seen.”

“Excellent.  Have a few of the workers convert to working on the vein and store them in a safe place.  Would it be alright if I took two or three?”  Cadeyrn asked as he rubbed his chin.  His green eyes were keen as he thought.  It was the keenness of one who planned.

The second jotun held out the box.  “These are all for you, my Quen.  The workers wanted them presented to you.”

“Oh!”  Cadeyrn drew back.  “I couldn’t!  You were the ones who found them.  They could be used for so many things…  I just need a few to barter with the dwarves.”

And then there are sudden grins across the face of every jotun in the room.  The two visitors looked between each other.  The one once again presents the smaller box to the human.  “We would happily bring the entire vein if it meant seeing you outwit the tiny stones.”

The first laughed wildly at the thought.  “Keep them, Cadeyrn-Quen.  Jotunheim knows you will use them well.”  A chance comes over the room as the two leave.  More guards come from the hall and line the both sides of the chamber along the pillars.  And this time they all have weapons.  Loki has to softly move to a new spot to still be able to see.  All the boxes are hidden out of sight, including the box of blue stones.  Cadeyrn has taken only a few, placing them in a small drawstring that he tucks up his sleeve.  There is nothing in the hands of his sons now.  Both remain to flank either side of the seat, standing to their full height with their arms crossed.  Now that he is not hunched over Loki can see that Byleistr towers in height, even taller than a regular jotun.  Cadeyrn settles back into his seat.  And he is no longer the easy going, relatable man that the frost giants have come to see.

He is removed.  His is the man seated high above the dais.  His face is coy and his eyes are almost half lidded in disinterest.  A grin appears on his face.  Loki recognizes it as one of enjoyment at the thought of what one is about to do.  Then it is gone and Cadeyrn nods at the guards at the door to let the last visitors in.  

Just who was Cadeyrn?  Loki slowly began to wonder.  And who was he to Jotunheim, this human that the frost giants respected and called Cadeyrn-Quen?  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooo, now what could Cadeyrn be planning with the dwarves?
> 
> I'm still planning and working out where everything will go in the story. I'm okay with it now, but still might come back and rework things. 
> 
> Quen is the male equivalent of Queen (just spelled/pronounced slightly different) in this universe. Its both shorter and more accurate than King-Consort. Also, since its Laufey-King (instead of our familiar King then name) Cadeyrn is refered to as Cadeyrn-Quen. Lets see how long it takes for Loki to figure this out.


	4. Indebted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cadeyrn deals with the dwarven visitors. And there is someone there from both his own and Loki's past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say thank you to the reviewer GreenGoblin whose question led to the creation of this chapter: "Are these the same dwarves that sewed Loki's mouth shut all those years ago? or has that happened yet?"
> 
> Originally/in writing chapter 3, no. The dwarves were simply a group that trades with Jotunheim (not many realms do). Cadeyrn was using them to get cuttings/saplings from the elves for his garden, to see if they can grow in the protected Jotunheim soil and potentially be another food source. Cadeyrn, as quen and crafty enough to manipulate them, gets them to do it and keep them interested in continuing trade with the promise of Sea Sapphires.
> 
> But then when I thought about the question, and the myth where Brokkr sews Loki's mouth shut, I realized I could use it. I needed something for Cadeyrn and Loki to start bonding over. Something that tips Loki from thinking himself prisoner in a hostile place to potentially having an ally and true friend.

The doors are opened by the guards, allowing in a small company of dwarves.  The short men moved until they were several feet from the foot of the stairs.  The leader made a grand show of bowing to Cadeyrn, a flickering of hands and head low until his beard tickled the floor.  The rest follow his example if simpler.  For most of them are trying not to nervously eye the giants that surround them.  

The leader stands back up and Loki feels his breath catch in his throat.  And he prays that no one has heard him.  He recognizes the dwarf.  There is no name or reason why, but a wild instinct that he has seen him before and he meant pain.  He can see the way the dwarf is openly eyeing Cadeyrn and the look is almost lecherous.  The human has no reaction from what Loki can see, except for a muscle that twitches every now and then on his neck through a part in the dark hair.  

“Cadeyrn-Quen, as lovely as ever before.  Nay.  You are ever more striking!”  The leader declares.  Beside him Helblindi crosses his arms more firmly and Byleistr growls ever so softly.  He does not need to motion for them to control themselves, but even now he is wishing Laufey was with him.  The dwarf always made his skin crawl.

“I thought it was made clear last time that only Eitri was allowed to return,” Cadeyrn answers in an offhanded way.  He shifts disinterestedly in the chair.  The dripping compliments have no effect on him and he wants the dwarf to know.

“But dear Cadeyrn-Quen, I only took this as my chance to redeem myself.  I made some terrible mistakes, horrible assumptions last time.  I wouldn’t want those events to hinder the relationships between the realms.”  The dwarf rubbed at his hands.  Then he hurriedly added, “Besides, Eitri found himself overworked on a commission and unable to come.  I simply wanted to be assured myself your delivery arrived safely.”

“And yet still you have broken your word.”  Cadeyrn slowly leaned on one arm of the seat, bracing his chin on one folded hand.  He crosses his legs and Loki sees that the dwarf’s eyes are locked on them.  “I hold words quite dear.  There are so many things they could be used for.  Surely you can understand my… frustration when they are twisted.”  The human switches his legs and leans back lazily in the chair.  His long fingers twine together in his lap now.  “I would see it first, to know that it has arrived as I wished.”

The dwarf blustered through his reply.  Why of course the goods had arrived just as Cadeyrn wanted!  Why would he ever think of swindling him?  What kind of dwarf would he be if he cheated a buyer on a task?  He moved to take one of the many bundles that the dwarves are carrying.  He does not see the look of displeasure on Cadeyrn’s face and the warning expressions on the rest.  The rest of the company of dwarves, however, do.  The bundles are drawn away from the leader and harsh, hurried words are passed between them.  Livid, yet trying to hold it from Cadeyrn, the leader holds back as, one by one, the dwarves climb the steps and present the bundles to the human.  

Loki had expected jewels, weapons, or even perhaps armor.  What inside the bundles is … sticks.  He blinked and looked closer.  No.  They are actually cuttings and saplings from trees.  Cadeyrn looks at each and every one, purposefully taking his time.  He assures himself that each one is alive and survived its trip through Jotunheim.  When the bundle is inspected he would take it from the dwarf and hand it to one of his sons after carefully rewrapping it.  Most of the dwarves are respectful, if a bit anxious, either from Cadeyrn’s position or the giants surrounding him.  But some look at him with an open awe or even hunger.  Loki has had enough dealings with dwarves to know that some cannot help themselves when they see something of interest to them.  They see Cadeyrn as a beauty.  As a jewel that is just out of reach.

And Cadeyrn, fully aware, is playing that to his advantage.

The colors of his robe and cloak compliment the shades of his skin and eyes.  His hair was bound away from his face, some strands now escaped and curling, to show it off.  He is sure to keep his eyes half lidded or to blink slowly as he looks on them.  Every now and then a coy look.  Every now and then a smile close to pleasure.  

“See, Cadeyrn-Quen?  We followed your instructions to the letter.”  The leader says it as if instead saying ‘I honored your words’. “The elves harvested the cuttings you wanted and bound them right before we left.  Then I… I mean, me and my men, brought them across the border and straight to you.  Is it to your satisfaction?”  The dwarf drums his fingers together.  He leans closer to the stairs with an eager expression.  If he was permitted closer, Loki knows the dwarf would be leaning over Cadeyrn ominously.  “Now, since you have looked over the goods and found them adequate, we might perhaps discuss the option of payment.”  

“Payment?”  Cadeyrn raises one dark eyebrow.  “Retrieving the saplings was the exchange for the many difficulties and insults to my house that you caused when last you were here.  _Brokkr_.”

In his hiding place, Loki turns to ice.  The single word, the dwarf’s name, brings the memories flooding back.  Memories that he had long ago buried and hoped to forget.  He had been young, barely a teenager at the time.  Thor had snuck into the Vault and taken Mjolnir since he was unable to wait until it was given to him.  As one might expect, Thor had run off with it and then promptly managed to chip her.  Fearful of their father’s reaction he had come to Loki instead.  Perhaps he shouldn’t have helped.  Hindsight told him that Thor might have learned that actions had consequences and some humility from the punishment Odin would have laid down.  

But he, Loki, so young and foolish himself, had only wanted to protect his brother.  

He had snuck through the secret branches of Yggdrasil from Asgard to Nidavellir, the realm of the dwarves.  The dwarves might lack many things but it was no lie that they were some of the best craftsmen in all the Nine Realms.  There was no way that he could have simply handed them Mjolnir and asked them to repair her.  Searching about the realm he had heard that brothers Eitri and Brokkr were the most skilled.  He had crafted wiles and spun a wager.  He wanted gifts created for his parents; was anything they created magnificent enough?  First created was the ship Skidbladnir, able to carry all the Aesir and their weapons, find the most favorable of winds, and when not needed be able to be folded up and carried in ones pocket.  Draupnir was next, a golden arm ring that created more rings equal to its size and weight every eighth night.  Then had comeGullinbursti.  The brothers had thrown a pigskin into the fire and out had come a living boar with a bristle-mane that glowed in the dark.

Others might be impressed by what they had created, Loki had said.  But he was still not sure this was what he wanted to present to his parents.  If these two dwarves were such creators, could they have the skill to repair something already created?  He had presented Mjolnir with her appearance magicked to appear a lesser hammer.  Eitri and Brokkr had thought it simple.  That was until it took them four days to repair her to her original glory.  Then, Loki had snuck away, sure to cover his tracks so the dwarves could not find him.  

He did not know how, but the dwarves had somehow not only figured out just what hammer it was they had worked upon, but they had uncovered his identity.  They had burst into Asgard before the seat of Odin and demanded that he judge their work.  What was better:  the things they had created or the repairs to Mjolnir?  The entire affair now exposed Odin had ignored the frantic protest of his sons and judged that, despite the creativity and use of the gifts, Mjolnir was above all else.  Loki remembered how Brokkr had howled with laughter and immediately demanded the payment of the wager:  Loki’s head.

That had never been the wager.  The wager had been the weight of Loki’s head in rare, colored diamonds.  Even the dwarf Eitri remembered that this was the true wager and tried to dissuade his brother.  But Brokkr demanded his head.  Everyone had looked on.  None had protested or come to his aid (for Thor and Frigga could do nothing).  Thinking quickly Loki had spun his words that, yes, Brokkr could have his head, but none of his neck, as that was not part of the wager.  He had thought himself safe and the rest of the company whispering in argreement, how could they take the head without the neck?  Brokkr had howled in a rage.  He demanded that, if he could not have his head, he would sew his mouth shut so no more lies could be spun.

Odin had agreed.

Despite his position and all he had gone through in his life, before and since, it was in that moment Loki had felt the most fear.  Even when compared to now, being held prisoner in the realm of his enemy.  His father had agreed with a stranger over his own son.  His father had allowed him to be hurt.  He remembered how Brokkr had pinned him down.  He remembered the crushing weight on his chest as he sat there and the smell of sweat and the forge on him.  Brokkr had pulled an awl and leather thread from his pocket (why did he have it in the first place?).  But most of all Loki remembered the eyes.  Dark as they leered down at him.  It was in that moment that Loki knew the dwarf had wanted a very different use for his head and mouth.  

The pain was so great he almost didn’t remember.  He had hidden himself afterwards.  Away from the laughs and the leers and his father’s word that this was a lesson to control his mouth and lies.  Frigga had come as soon as she could, Thor at her heels, to cut the thread away.  Pulling them out was almost worse than when they had been sewn in.  Despite all they had tried the wounds healed to scars.  Scars that had caused his mother so much distress he had taken to hiding them away with magic.  No one remembered it now.  Not his parents nor Thor, who had never received any punishment he knew of for the theft and damage to Mjolnir.  

When Loki returned from the memory, heart pounding in his throat, Brokkr was eyeing Cadeyrn once again.  “Yes, perhaps.  But surely you understand how… difficult it was.  I’m sure you know how trade works, Cadeyrn-Quen, for there must be something for us to return to the area.  If we bring something yet leave empty handed then what is the point?”

Cadeyrn glanced in a bored manner at his nails.  “You still all have your hands,” he said without looking up.  The declaration must have something to do with what had happened on the previous visit.  For, as Loki saw, many of the dwarves either rubbed or hide their hands out of sight.  Even Brokkr seemed uneasy at the reminder.

“However,” Cadeyrn continued, “I must admit I can see your point.  What would you think would be a worthy payment for me to provide?”  By the way Cadeyrn secretly grins as the dwarves talk among themselves, Loki knows the human is leading them into a trap.  Brokkr seems to want to ask for something while the others vehemently refuse to even allow him to ask.  Cadeyrn innocently suggest payments only for the dwarves to politely decline them.

As the game continues back and forth, Cadeyrn slowly pulled the drawstring bag from his sleeve.  He opened it and withdrew one of the pale blue stones, the one the size of his thumb.  He plays with it, rolling it between his slim fingers, waiting for the dwarves to notice.  When they did it was sudden.  Almost the entire company was halfway up the stairs before they remembered to stop.  Cadeyrn’s smile only grew and he leaned back with a satisfied sound.  “Ah, so that is what you want.  But you said last time you didn’t want them.”

He continued to roll the stone between his forefinger and thumb.  At one point he raised it to the light, admiring it’s color, and every dwarf eye followed it.  “I think I almost prefer it in this form; rough, unshaped, simply how it was formed.  Beautiful, isn’t it?  Our Sea Sapphire.” 

Brokkr tries to recover and fails.  “We did not think there were any left.”

“Some appear, every now and then.  They are very precious to us.”  Cadeyrn makes it sound like the stone he holds is the only one in existence.  What the dwarves don’t know is that a few sit in the drawstring bag, and an entire box sits hidden behind the seat.  Loki grins in his hiding place.  Cadeyrn’s plan is both wicked and clever.  There is bartering, bargaining, back and forth between the two before Brokkr settles on the single stone in Cadeyrn’s hand.

The human stood and the dwarf approached him.  Between his own natural height and the steps between them Cadeyrn looms.  He reaches out with just his hand and simply drops the stone into the awaiting one.  Loki can suddenly see that Cadeyrn does not wish to get any closer or to even touch the dwarf.  And he soon sees why.  Brokkr grins wickedly once he has the stone and his meaty hand lashes out.  It lands on Cadeyrn’s wrist and yanks him closer.  “Now that that’s done, cannot we talk of other things?  There are so many things I could create for you.  Silks and jewels, bracelets for your pretty wrists and necklaces for your slim neck.  I would only add to your beauty, my lustrious one.”  The more he spoke the more Brokkr’s voice dropped, finally ending with “I could take you with me, take you away from your monster of a husband and be mine-“

Cadeyrn hauled back and punched him as hard as he could.

Loki had been expecting a slap, or even a backhand.  Not a punch.  The dwarf reeled back, releasing his grip on the human.  He almost tumbled done the stairs until he regained his balance at the last second.  The rest of the company of dwarves had shrunk back out of reach.  By their wide eyes and horrified expressions they had not even dared to think that Brokkr would try something like that.  Cadeyrn was well within his right to not only strike the dwarf, but probably order them all to be killed.  The Jotun guards had stepped closer, weapons raised.  That was not even to mention Cadeyrn’s sons.  Loki had not even seen them move.  Helblindi and Byleistr were suddenly right behind their father, hiding him in their shadows, growling as they leaned over him protectively.

“Out.”  Was Cadeyrn single, powerful command.  There wasn’t a need for him to say anything more.  The guards understood.  As did the dwarves.  That was, it seemed, except Brokkr.  He had to be dragged by his fellows from the room, sputtering things in the human’s direction.  Cadeyrn watched him go with narrowed green eyes.  He said nothing as the door slammed behind them.  

He waited for several moments, then turned to the side as he clutched his hand. _“Mab i ast! Mae hynny'n brifo. A oedd ef yn gwisgo haearn dan ei groen? Bastard.”*_ Cadeyrn muttered in a language Loki did not recognize.  His sons and many of the guards crowded around him demanding to know if he was alright.  He nodded and waved them off.  Many refused to believe it until he showed them his hand and wrist.  “Allow them to stay the night in the distant shelter; it’s too late for them to cross the border before dark.  But make sure they leave and Brokkr is never allowed back.”

Loki left before them, guessing correctly that Cadeyrn would be returning directly to his room.  Well, almost correct.

~*~*~

“He dared to touch you.  Again.” Laufey growled as he looked on Cadeyrn’s hand.  His quen was clever.  With his quick mind and calm disposition he was perfect to take care of many of the audiences and petitions.  Laufey took care of much of the infighting, like clan and land disputes, the matters concerning the realm that could be violent and needed a warrior-king’s hand.  Cadeyrn took care of the matters of the people, the things concerning sickness, goods and trade, food, and the like.  They always consulted one another and were likely to call the other if something was difficult to consider alone.  

The dwarves, but mostly this Brokkr in particular, had created problems since the first time he had arrived.  Cadeyrn had made a wise decision to deal with them alone for the most part, for Laufey would have long ago crushed the puny thing.  His human knew exactly how to manipulate them to get what he wanted in goods or trade outside the realm.  But Brokkr didn’t want goods or payment.  He wanted Cadeyrn himself.

Even his mate now realized it had gone too far.  

Cadeyrn rubbed at his reddening knuckles.  “Don’t worry, I am considering ways to deal with him.  Trust me, I would much rather watch as you squish him, if it weren’t for the potential reprecutions from Nidavellir and Asgard.”

Laufey growled low in his throat and kissed his mate’s knuckles.

~*~*~

Loki looked up as Cadeyrn returned.  He made all appearances that he had never left the cavern.  Changed clothes, grabbed a book and opened to some portion halfway in, and sat out reading on one of the rocks in the garden.  Helblindi and Byleistr were with him.  Between them they carried the bags that the saplings and cuttings arrived in, as well as the original chest.  The creature also carried Cadeyrn in the set of arms closer to his, as if he expected the dwarf to pop out of nowhere and try to take him.  The human eventually slipped out of his arms and directed them where to leave the bags.  They hovered around him, wanting to be close.

“Don’t worry.  I won’t be planting yet; I need to get the roots growing on the cuttings.  You can come back in a little bit.”  Cadeyrn was smiling gently now.  He touched and reassured the two frost giants as a parent would to a child.  The two eventually relented but not without Helblindi murmuring that they would be right back.  After they left Cadeyrn sighed softly and ran a hand through his black hair to free it from its decorative style.  

“Did you see all you snuck up to see?”

Loki started before he could stop himself.  He looked up from the book, ready to ask what he could ever mean, then stopped.  Cadeyrn was watching him.  And the look in his crafty green eyes revealed that he had known Loki was there the entire time.  Cadeyrn smiled at Loki’s expression and moved to start working on the trees.  He opened the bag of cuttings and started to set the cut ends into prepared little cups of water.  “I’m surprised you haven’t tried to do it before now.”

“How did you know?”  Loki demanded.  The spells he used to guard his appearance were ones he developed himself.  Most of the time even Heimdall could not see him.  Had Cadeyrn truly known?  Or had he made a bluff that Loki had unknowingly stumbled in to?

Cadeyrn only shrugged.  “I could not see you.  My magic, if that is what it even is, is infantile.  But I could sense a disturbance following us since we left and the entire time in the audience chamber.”  He dropped another cutting into the water and looked up.  “I permitted you to see,” he revealed, “because no Asgardian has ever bothered to learn anything about us.”  In his words, and simmering underneath them, was the impression that, if Loki had tried to harm anyone, Cadeyrn would have had him struck down.

Loki had to steel his face to keep the rage hidden.  How dare this man, this human, assume anything about him.  He had not wanted to learn anything about the Jotun.  They were monsters.  This assumption could work to his advantage.  As long as he could hide his emotions.  

“Did the dwarf Brokkr do anything to you?”  Cadeyrn asked.  The human had sprung the question at just the right moment.  There was no way for Loki to hide his reaction.  To think of any way to counter it.  His hands clutched at the book, seeking a way to protect him.  “I sensed it when he arrived, and especially when I said his name.”  Cadeyrn offered softly.  “Your presence changed...  I’ve dealt with him before and his… depraved, debauched personality...”

And suddenly everything is spilling out of Loki.  The incident, the suppressed memory, has been bottled up for far too long.  And seeing Brokkr has brought it all boiling back to the surface.  How Thor had stolen and broken Mjolnir, how he had tried to get it repaired before their father found out, how Brokkr had demanded that he had won the wager and, finally, how Odin had permitted the dwarf to sew his own son’s lips shut.  

When it is all over, Cadeyrn is staring at him.  Anger is roiling underneath his skin.  His jaw is tight.  His eyes are open in a stare that is not seeing anything around him.  His lips are drawn in a thin line.  Suddenly, the sapling Cadeyrn had been holding in his hand snapped.  It seemed to awaken him by whatever thoughts had controlled him.  Cursing under his breath he dumped the halves back onto the pile.  “Your… your father _allowed_ that?  Odin allowed someone to purposefully harm you?”

Loki, for once, had no answer.  Cadeyrn was on his feet, pacing back and forth as he raged out loud to himself.  How could any parent permit harm to come to their child.  It wasn’t right.  Of course children needed to learn lessons. But not if it left them hurt and afraid.  Loki knows that he should answer Cadeyrn.  He knows that he should reply and try to defend his father.  But he can’t.  Not when everything Cadeyrn says is something Loki himself had questioned and wondered.  Eventually, Cadeyrn sat back down next to him heavily.  Part of the anger is spent and is replaced by something else.  He taps his fingers against his chin as he thinks.  

“So that’s how you got the scars around your mouth…” The human whispered softly.  Loki turns to him, shocked, and there is a hand cupping his cheek, a thumb gently touching the corner of his mouth.  How?  “They appear when you sleep…”

Loki turns away, shrugging off the hand.  There isn’t anything he can say.  

“Ah!  I know just what to do.”  Cadeyrn declares as he snaps his fingers.  He swiftly retrieved his pen and a black piece of paper from the chest.  He set it on the book that he moved to rest of both their laps.  “We will write a letter to the dwarf.  Something to lure him.  Something that will do away with him.”  There is a spark of a plan in Cadeyrn’s eyes, and Loki can feel his own smirk as he catches on.  “You are quite well known for your wit and way with words, Loki.  Surely between the two of us, we can come up with something.”

“Yes~”  And the two bent over the page, twisting the words to fit with their plan.

~*~*~

Brokkr smiled to himself as he snuck through the palace.  He had known how to get to the audience chamber.  But he knew masonry and how many buildings were laid out.  It would be an easy thing to search the Jotun Palace and find the room of Cadeyrn.  Ah, how he had known!  Since the moment he had first laid eyes on the human, he had known he would have him.  The Jotun Queen had only been playing at his disinterest with Brokkr’s affections.  He had his husband, Laufey-King, to deal with.

But now, ohhh, now!  The letter had arrived at the place provided for the dwarves to sleep for the night.  Written by Cadeyrn’s own hand, asking him to come and settle things between them.  The letter might say one thing but Brokkr knew they meant another.  Cadeyrn wanted him to come deep within the palace, to the bed chamber, and whisk him away.  And how he would!  He would finally have the Jewel of Jotunheim to himself.  To see and to touch and bruise beneath his hands and fuck hard into the bed until the stone cracked behind it.

Brokkr used his small height to his advantage.  The Frost Giants were huge, but stupid.  They were used to being on the lookout for something only the human’s size.  He, as a dwarf, was even smaller.  He could slip shadow to shadow, stone to stone, unnoticed.  He tried a few of the doors deep in the palace and had no luck.  The last, however, held his prize.  It was a bathing chamber built around a tiny hot spring that fed into a bath sunken into the floor.  And there was his beautiful Cadeyrn, naked, relaxing in the water, hair tied up to keep it dry.  His emerald-jewel eyes are closed in pleasure as he enjoys the heat.

The door slammed shut and Cadeyrn jumped in the bath.  His eyes darted to the door and widened further when he saw who it was.  He backed to the other side of the pool, scrambling to get out.  “Brokkr!  How did you get in here?”  Brokkr drew closer to the pool, hands wanting.  Ah, the human was just playing with him.  “You know why, my dear~”

Cadeyrn is very good at playing surprise and fear on his face.  “No!  How dare you!”  He darted from the pool and snatched a robe from a nearby bench, holding it to his chest to cover himself.  Brokkr licked his lips greedily, eyes on the body he will soon have.  The pale expanse of his shoulders, the curve of a hip, the water dripping over his skin.  But then Cadeyrn has a short sword in his hand, holding it in a ready motion.  Wait… what could this be?  Brokkr searches plaintively for the words to calm his lover.  It doesn’t work.

“Laufey!  LAUFEY!”  Suddenly Cadeyrn is screaming.  His eyes greed eyes dart between the dwarf and the door.  The ground suddenly rumbles and the doors burst from their hinges.  They fall to the floor with a crack that is only less loud than the pounding footfalls of the Jotun King who suddenly has the perplexed dwarf in one hand.  Brokkr prays to the stone as the frost giant squeezes and roars with a voice more fierce than a mountain wind.  

~*~*~

Helblindi stormed back into his fathers’ room.  “He’s in the dungeon,” he declared to his dam.  Father-King has his sire clutched to his chest protectively.  Cadeyrn is not even dressed yet.  Laufey has him covered with one of the blankets from their shared bed.  He looks at his eldest son with wide eyes, still trying to find where his plan had gone wrong.  His father had told them of his plan, of how to get rid of Brokkr but still keep their trade with the Dwarven Realm open.  They had all read the letter, worded so that any other reader would see that Cadeyrn had asked Brokkr to come back to the audience chamber to make it clear just how precarious the dwarf’s position was in the eyes of the Frost Giants.  But anyone who knew the situation and knew Brokkr, had known he would read the letter as an invitation to come to Cadeyrn’s room.

They had it all set up.  Brokkr would make it to the bed chamber where he would ‘surprise’ the human and they would all spring on him.  It would be seen as an obvious threat to both Laufey’s Quen and an insult to the entire realm.  What they hadn’t planned on was that Brokkr would arrive hours earlier, make it to a  different part of the palace, and surprise Cadeyrn in his bath.  

“Good,” Laufey growls.  One arm holds his mate to his chest while the other rests on his second son’s shoulders to calm him where he is tucked against his side.  “Now Hreidmarr will know not to insult us with such disgusting creatures as his ambassadors.”  There is a smile, as cruel as ice, on his face.  He knows the Dwarven King has no way to get Brokkr out of their dungeon.  Now Brokkr could very well face a little ‘accident’ or freeze to death as their prisoner.

~*~*~

“Brokkr has been dealt with.”  Cadeyrn declared as he slipped into the chair across the table from Loki.

“He has?”  Loki cannot help the surprise.  They had written the letter, crafting it in a way to leave Cadeyrn innocent and Brokkr guilty.  But, deep down, he had never expected anything to come of it.

“Yes, it’s in our cells now.”  Cadeyrn grinned.  He leaned his elbows on the table, leaning closer to Loki.  “What would you like to do?  There are so many things…  Ooo, mayhaps we could bring you down. ‘Well dwarf.  Seems you’ll have a companion with this Asgardian Prince.  It’s a waste to heat two cells for two prisoners so we’ll leave you both in one.’” He laughed.  “I can just see the look on his face when he realizes just who you are and the revenge you can take.  What do you think?”

“You’d… you’d do that for me?”  No one has ever suggested such a thing to him before.  No one had ever sought to comfort or avenge him after it had happened.  Not Thor.  Not Frigga.  Not Odin.  “Why?”

“Perhaps because I felt like it.  Perhaps I just needed an excuse that wasn’t related to us.  Perhaps I needed someone to get revenge for besides myself.”  Cadeyrn offers the excuses.  Loki has outwitted many people to know that none of the reasons are true.  The human is simply offering them.  Not even trying to hide that they are lies.  

“But,” Cadeyrn continued.  His voice softened and he looked away.  He is suddenly somewhere far away.  When he speaks again, Loki knows this is the true reason why.  “Perhaps I wanted you to feel in my debt.  So you would answer me when I asked you something.”

“What?”

“Are there any young Frost Giants in Asgard?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *;Mab i ast! Mae hynny'n brifo. A oedd ef yn gwisgo haearn dan ei groen? Bastard' being Welsh for 'Son of a bitch! That hurt. Was he wearing iron under his skin? Bastard.' I have no idea if this is an accurate translation or not, having used the internet. 
> 
> The use of Welsh is a hint towards Cadeyrn's origin. I will admit to another hint. He orignally was going to have a simple backstory and I was looking for old names outside of Old Norse. I came across Cadeyrn and liked it enough to use it. But then I looked into the origin of the name and found the coincidences of the original so intriguing of where I was going with the story I had to use it. Can you guess who he is?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Odin finally sends a messenger to Jotunheim demanding the return of his son.

“…what?”  Loki had to ask again.  Had he heard Cadeyrn correctly?  But the expression on the human’s face, plaintive, trying to conceal his hope.  For a moment he refuses to answer.  He won’t tell them anything; he would not risk harm to his home and family.  But then his own mind betrays him.  He finds himself curious, “No.  What reason would a Frost Giant have to live on Asgard?  And neither do we have any prisoner.  Keeping you on your realm is prison enough.  Why?”

Cadeyrn’s face pales even further.  He sinks into the chair, not seeing anything around him.  He almost looks ready to throw up.  “He wouldn’t have been a captive warrior.  He would be a young man now, only a newborn of a few days old when the war ended.”

Loki has only to think a moment.  “No.  Despite what you may think, we don’t have any Jotun captives or slaves.”  He keeps his eyes on Cadeyrn, still asking his silent question.  Why?  Out of everything he could do, could ask while he believes that he is in Loki’s favor, why would it be this?

Cadeyrn curls his hand over his mouth.  He crews his eyes shut tight.  He fights back both bile and tears.  “My youngest…” Cadeyrn finally speaks in a whisper.  He swallows and starts again.  “We had three children.  Helblindi, Byleistr… and Loptr.  He was born before… only a few days old when the war began and ended.  He… was so tiny, I mean, compared to a Jotun baby.  Born the size of a human baby; he was the only one to show my blood.”  Through the pain, Cadeyrn smiles at the fond memory.  “L- my mate didn’t want to risk the baby and I falling together should the battle reach us, so we were hidden separately…”  Cadeyrn’s throat closes and he can say no more.  He doesn’t need to.  Loki can conclude that Cadeyrn survived and the child did not.  But it must have gone missing since, many years later, he is still searching.  

“Is there perhaps a shapeshifter in Asgard?  Or one who can even change his skin to who touches him?  Or resembles me?  When I first held Loptr, his appearance would change.  Pale with green eyes… I don’t know what his hair would be now, he didn’t even have a wisp… maybe’s he’s bald, or black, or any number of colors.”  Cadeyrn is rambling now.  He closes his eyes and runs a hand over them.  And the hand is trembling.

“No…”  He should be able to use this to his advantage.  Cadeyrn has exposed himself.  He has shown where he is weak and vulnerable.  But he can’t, Loki discovers.  He doesn’t want to.  “I am sorry… but I have never seen anyone like that…”

After several silent moments, Cadeyrn released a long slow breath.  He looked to Loki and smiled softly.  It did not reach his eyes as it usually did.  “Thank you for answering me… I’ll… I’ll be back in a little while…”

After he leaves, Loki cannot understand what has left him uneasy.  It thugs at his heart and his mind.  There is something there, something in what Cadeyrn said.  But what?  Loki circles his arms around himself tight.  He thinks of something, a possibility, that he latches onto even though he knows it is not the whole reason.  Loki has been here a handful of days.  And, as far as he knows, there has been no contact from Odin.  His father has not even secretly sent him a missive by magic.  The logical part of him knows that there are politics and the safety of others to consider.  But then there is the part of him that is Odin’s son.  Shouldn’t he be charging in here, demanding his return?

Here is Cadeyrn.  He has a powerful position.  He’s elevated from a lowly human on a realm that isn’t even his own.  He has two sons already and (potentially) a happy marriage.  It has been decades.  There is little reason to hope. And yet Cadeyrn still loves his son.  He still searches for the baby he lost without even the surety he is still alive.  

There is a moment Loki wishes he could have a father like Cadeyrn.

~*~*~

He knows he should not go to Laufey, but he must.  He cannot take this sadness alone.  He needs the comfort of his mat.  Cadeyrn hovers out of sight of the clan leader seeking an audience.  Laufey does not blink or glance, but a change in his bearing tells that he knows Cadeyrn is there.  He deals with the clan leader as quickly as possible and then sends out as many people as he can.  He holds an arm out to him and Cadeyrn takes it, climbing the throne until he is in Laufey’s lap.  Then the tears fall silently as he tells Laufey the information he has gleaned from Loki.  No sign of Loptr, of a Frost Giant or a shapeshifter with green eyes in Asgard.  Then he can speak no more and buries his face in Laufey’s chest.

Laufey holds him.  But he does not cry.  He cannot cry, for outsiders could see.  So Cadeyrn cries for hi, as he has done many times before.

~*~*~

It is then that Loki decides to watch Cadeyrn.  He has nothing better to do, held captive here.  He has his reasons.  And no, he does not need to explain them.  It must be due to his situation, some coping mechanism that he should be feeling something like pity for Cadeyrn.  That he thinks of Cadeyrn like a friend.  That he wishes to do something for him.  And that is not even the half of it.  He wants to show him the library in Asgard or take him on adventures so he’ll have something to talk to.  He even thinks to suggest some ambassadorship between the realms so they can keep in contact.  Maybe this is what Jotunheim wanted.  Maybe this is what they are trying to do.  

Loki tries to remember the last time he had thought of someone not as an acquaintance and as a friend.  He does not remember how that happened, or came to be.  They just seemed there.  Or, perhaps, because they were Thor’s friends that had become his friends.  

Cadeyrn had returned a short time later, and his two sons were with him.  He takes them to the garden where the saplings are waiting.  Loki wanders to them as well, seeking to be entertained.  Cadeyrn kneels in the dirt and rolls up his sleeves.  Helblindi and Byleistr crouch with him.  

“A sapling is like a baby tree.  It is just beginning, like the sprouts I showed you before.”  As he talks he digs a hole in the dirt filled wells.  “But they are large and can tower over even a jotun at times.  There are hundreds of types.  They can bear nuts, fruits, flowers, and many other things.”  He shows them how to check the roots and then how to plant them.  Though he knows Loki is there, he does not look at him.  But Loki can see that Cadeyrn’s eyes are red from crying. “Because of their height and the need for lots of water, the roots need more room.  That’s why I made the wells, to give them a depth to place their roots.”

The jotuns listen to him with rapt attention.  And Loki cannot understand why.  What is so important about these threes?  They are all over the place, and there are many of them right in his mother’s garden.  “It’s going to take them a long time to grow many years in fact.  When you cut a grown tree through the trunk, you can actually count the age of the tree by the rings inside.”

The family begins to plant the saplings.  As they work the sons continually asked questions (or made noise in Byleistr’s case).  The frost giants are careful with the plants and it is obvious they are holding back their icy touch.  Byleistr digs the hole and Helblindi plants them.  Cadeyrn follows behind, lingering at each tree.  

It takes Loki a long time to know what the human is doing. He holds his hands on either side of the sapling and keeps them there a time.  Then he spots it.  Magic.  Cadeyrn is using his magic.  It is simple and hardly felt.  He is manipulating the tree to accelerate its growth by taking to the new soil.  Cadeyrn’s magic is barely enough to make them grow a few inches and the leaves begin to bud.  In the amount of time it takes him Loki could have made a full grown tree.

“Were you never trained?”  Cadeyrn looks to Loki as he crouched next to him.  The prince clarified his question.  “Your magic.  What little of it you use…”

Bylesitr rumbles, as if Loki has insulted his father.  Cadeyrn only smiled.  “No,” he speaks as he concentrates, “no one in my family or anyone I ever knew had magic.  I didn’t even know what it was until I was a ten.  By then it was too late.  The wizard Myriddin took note of me when he was at my father’s castle/fortress, but said it was too little to bother with.”

“Hmm,” Loki made no reply.  He only looked to the trees as he considers it.  It is more difficult to train an adult, to unlock the barriers and control it.  He waves a hand at one of the saplings, words whispered softly, and it bursts into sweet pink blossoms.  What would it be like to not have his magic, to be unable to access and use it to his whims?  He opens his mouth to offer the thought that perhaps he could teach Cadeyrn, but he stops.  They are interrupted.  

Six jotun appear at the entrance.  Tall, powerful, guards with weapons in their hands.  One looks to Cadeyrn and the rest focus on Loki.  “Cadeyrn-Quen.  Laufey-King has demanded the Asgardian prince.  There is a messenger of Odin. 

The air tensed.  Helblindi and Byleistr looked between each other, words unspoken.  Cadeyrn said nothing.  He rose from the dirt, rubbing at his hands and knees.  A glance is all he needs to see that Loki has already steeled himself.  Every ounce of his being is drawn up. And a mask has come over his face.  Cadeyrn knows that he is plotting and planning.  He silently moved to the young man’s side.  He doesn’t need to tell the guards that he is going as well to escort Loki. 

As they moved to the main audience in what had been formerly been a grand throne room, Cadeyrn thought.  He and Laufey had known this would happen.  While the attack on Jotunheim by Thor and his companions was one thing, the blame going to Asgard, the capture of Loki by the guards was another, with some blame now on Jotunheim.  It was a delicate situation, one that even Cadeyrn cannot think to maneuver them out safely.  Loki is the second prince of Asgard.  While they both were, admittedly, loathe to use someone’s child against them, they wanted the return of the Casket.  If they can just bring Odin to the table, off his high and mighty throne, they can explain everything.  There never was an invasion of Midgard.  There is no reason for them to go to war then, and there reason now, especially with their weakened numbers.  The taking of the Casket of Ancient Winters is slowly killing their world.  They want it returned.  If no that, if Odin doesn’t believe them, then perhaps they can borrow it every few months to slowly restore the realm.

He and Laufey have even considered, if Odin will accept nothing else, accepting a wergild and demanding to know the fate of their son.  Odin, the cause of the war, with his high seat, his power, and his magic, will know.  A son in exchange for a son sounds reasonable.  

But what bothers him more is how long it has taken for Odin to appear, even in the form of a messenger.  There had been written demands, missives sent back and forth over the days.  If Helblindi or Byleistr were held captive by another realm, he would have charged in to rescue them, politics be damned. (True, he would have demanded what by Hel they were doing to get themselves in trouble).

On the journey, Loki is aware.  They are continuing along the long hallway.  They are now past the turnoff to the audience chamber.  It only takes Loki a moment of walking into the hollow to know this is the same place where Thor had confronted Laufey.  The Frost Giant is still in the same place, sitting above on his icy throne.  He looks down as the guards stop Loki alongside the throne.  They surround him still, a few steps away, leaving little chance he could get very far in an escape.  The ruby red eyes bore into him.  Just as before, he is unable to read the enemy king’s face.  Impassive as the ice itself.

It is then Loki realizes that Cadeyrn, who had been walking beside him, is nowhere in sight.

There is no time to think on it.  Below them, across the hollow, is the messenger from Asgard.  He recognizes him, at least, what he can see underneath the thick coat.  A messenger of his father; no warrior or crafty negotiator.  The messenger immediately looks on him when he arrives, and makes the mistake of showing relief on his face.  Laufey finally looks to the Asgardian and speaks.

“So Odin finally decides to act, and all he sends is a messenger…”  The voice is deep and powerful.  Laufey does no t need to move, his body or the expression on his face.  The messenger takes a moment to hide his intimidation.  

“The Allfather believes that this can be resolved simply.”  The messenger replied.  “Return Prince Loki and Asgard will take no action against Jotunheim.”

Laufey does not even think on it a moment.  “No.”  He finally shifts on the throne, a slow settling of weight.  If I were to do that, it would only give Odin’s first son vindication on his attack.  The pup needs to learn he cannot invade a realm and attack without consequences.”

“Perhaps,” the messenger retorted, “but you must consider the matter of the frost giants invading Asgard—“

“An accusation is not reason enough to attack.  This lack is something both Odin and his son share.”

Silence permeated the hollow.  “So what is it that Jotunheim…demands… in return for Prince Loki?”

“We want returned what is ours and no one elses.  The Casket of Ancient Winters.  Odin had no right to take it and leave our home to slowly die.”

The messenger immediately opens his mouth to retort, to claim that this is not possible.  Loki leaps at the opportunity.  “Well, I think we can all see that nothing is getting accomplished chatting around here.  Go back to Father, get his reply.  I’m obviously fine, feed and cared for and all those things.”  He smiled and waved his hand, shooing the messenger away.  

The messenger won’t stop hesitating.  He wastes his time looking between Loki and Laufey-King.  Finally, after a rather pointed look from the second prince, he bowed.  “As you wish, my prince.”

Loki watched the messenger go.  He hoped the man remembered exactly what he had said, and that his family is smart enough to pick his hidden message out of the words.  As he looked out onto the wild snow he felt eyes on him.  Turning, he defiantly stared back up into the red eyes of Laufey.  He is very much the same as last he saw him a few days ago.  Quiet.  As if in some kind of repose.  But the longer he is in his presence, and in his silence, Loki can feel the danger in Laufey’s stillness.  The creature is studying him and deciding what to do.  

Fabric shifts off to the side and Cadeyrn came into view.  Out of the shadows of Laufey’s throne.  He has been standing there, out of sight, the entire time Loki.  His face is pensive as he looks past them out into the snow.  In a calculated movement Laufey stood from his throne.  He does not take a step closer, but stands before it with his arms crossed.  

“So you finally have your bargaining tool.”  Loki could not help but grin.  He had wanted to go one on one with the Jotun King before.  It was impossible, what with trying to keep Thor out of danger.  But here is the enemy of his father.  Since boyhood when Odin would regale them with stories of the war, Loki had always wondered why Odin had simply not killed Laufey.  He had the power.  But, instead, he had taken his power and locked them in their realm.  

Laufey makes no reply to his barb.  Loki says more, teases more.  Yet still… nothing.  The fun is soon gone.  Playing with a mouse is no fun when the mouse doesn’t move or make a peep.  The jotun only continues to stare.  His red eyes moving almost imperceptivity between Cadeyrn and him. 

“Is the accusation true?”

Loki turned to the questioner.  He had almost forgotten that Cadeyrn was there.  When his focus moves, he does not see how Laufey too switches his attention.  “Of what?”

“What your brother claimed, and the messenger repeated.  That jotun snuck into Asgard.”

“Of course!”  Loki glared at the human.  “I saw them myself, or what remained of them after the Destroyer got to them.”

“And how are we to know, then and even now, this is not some woven tale.  Silvertongue?”  Something flickers through Laufey.  A change in the stillness.  And it is dangerous.

Loki is so caught up in returning the stare that he almost misses Cadeyrn’s movement.  A hand rose up, fingers spread, and brushed over Laufey’s leg.  A simple touch.  Quick and without lingering.  The jotun leaned back.  Once more still.  

“Loki.  You must know, as your father Odin should, that sometimes the act of a few is not the act of the whole.  We actually thought the accusation was something your brother Thor made up.  He is known even here for his warmongering.”  He cannot argue with Cadeyrn there.  “But if this truly happened…”  Cadeyrn looked up to Laufey.  A quick glance that says all he wants to without speaking aloud for Loki to hear.  “There are as much an enemy to Jotunheim as they were to your realm.  We had nothing to do with it; so it must be looked into.”

Loki can only laugh.  Do they think him stupid?  It is a possibility of what suggests could be true.  His father had thought the same thing.  It had been Thor who had not believed it.  But if the enemy thinks to win him over by speaking such things, they are wrong.  

Cadeyrn ignored the reaction and looked to Laufey.  Jotuns must have gotten into the very heart of Asgard to gain such a reaction.  Which either meant they had threatened someone of importance or, more likely, gotten close to the Casket of Ancient Winters.  The only explanation is that someone had found and used the secret paths out of the realm to get to Asgard.  There could be any number of reasons for the action.  Perhaps they thought they were doing the realm, and their King and Quen, good by retrieving the Casket.  But other reasons are much more sinister.  They could have wanted the Casket for their own power.  And then there are others who had always been dissatisfied with Laufey’s rule, wanting own the throne, and Cadeyrn would not put it above them to do this so the blame would fall on Laufey.

He needs to think and to plan.  He needs to make his own maneuvers out of sight.  To keep his family and his realm safe.  There is one more quick touch, letting Laufey know of his plan.  He will look into this, guard Laufey’s back, so Laufey is free to deal with Asgard.  

“You can return him.”  Laufey says, finally cracking something like a smile down at him.  “He isn’t of any use right now up here.”

It is only when they are past the throne and heading down the hallway that Loki thinks of it.  In their first confrontation, in speaking and the battle that Thor had started, Laufey had never moved.  Loki had thought of it only in quick bursts since the frost giants had posed a bigger problem.  A king allowing others to battle for him; protect him.  A coward unwilling to dirty his own hands.  A man shocked by what is unfolding before he can stop it.  It had been none of those things.  For Laufey had been standing in front of what was the start of the hall, and the hall eventually only led to one place.

Deep into the heart of the castle.  Right to Cadeyrn’s safe, warm cavern.  

~*~*~

Laufey had made himself believe he had just been seeing things before.  

He had sensed right away when the sons of Odin had arrived in his realm.  It was hard to miss the bright beam of rainbow light.  The light that only signaled one thing:  Asgard and its Bifrost.  He had sent his mate deep into the palace and sent their sons down to protect him should anything happen.  But when he has seen the dark haired male that accompanied Thor he had nearly struck them all where they stood.  For he had thought it was Cadeyrn.  Somehow they had captured his mate; drawn him out by magic or caught him after an ill thought plan to deal with them himself.  Dragged before him with his hair shorn short.  

But when he had looked closer, willing his wild heart to stop, he had quickly seen it was not him.  The man was little more than a boy.  He carried him with self assurance and, granted, much less pompous pride than the golden haired one.  He wore Aesir garb and used much more different magic.  And yet when he had spoken or grinned wickedly in battle he had once more thought of Cadeyrn.  Taken captive, assured that this was Loki the second son of Odin, he had thought the matter cleared.

Now, seeing Loki and Cadeyrn standing next to each other, he is not so sure.

Laufey knows he cannot speak his suspicion to Cadeyrn.  His mate, his other half.  Cadeyrn already carries the pain of Loptr’s disappearance for the both of them.  He does not even know of the many Jotun who had appeared over the years, seeking private audiences with their king, claiming to be his long lost youngest.  He dealt them a heavy hand for even thinking to dare and kept the occurrences from Cadeyrn.  To suggest the absurd, crazy idea that Loki might be their son, kept in Asgard by whatever means, is too cruel if it turns out false.  

~*~*~

By the time they returned to the cavern, Loki is livid.  He is angry at everything and nothing.  And there is no way to vent it.  The guards had escorted them to the entrance of the cavern before leaving to guard the hall.  Helblindi and Byleistr were still working with the human’s so precious trees.  Cadeyrn had immediately left him to go to the creatures, drawing his oldest son away to talk in private. Loki sat down heavily on a rock jutting out of the floor. He wished there was something to slam shut or to throw. But that would be just like him, wouldn't it, to throw a fit like Thor.  

He was so wrapped up in the fury of his mind, he did not notice the heavy body settling next to him. Byleistr sat, watching him. Even he could sense the foul mood the Asgardian was in. One of the giant hands reached out. Slow. Cautious. Once he saw that Loki would not strike him, he patted him gently on the leg. An attempt to comfort him.

“Enough!”  Loki hisses, jerking his leg out of reach.  He turns his hidden anger on the monster.  “All of you are beneath me.  I will not be used and bullied by your kind.  And I will be comforted by such a dull, brainless creature like you who can’t even speak.”  

“I only speak when there is something worthwhile to say.”  

The soft words are so sudden, so shocking, that Loki can only stare at the jotun in silence.  The anger drains away.  He is at a loss for words, mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.  This entire time he had never heard Byleistr say a word.  He had thought him dull, or even mute.  Cadeyrn and Helblindi often spoke to the large jotun, carried on conversations, in which Byleistr never spoke.  He made expressions, noises, and Loki had thought that that had been his ways of communicating.  

Byleistr is watching him.  Somehow beneath the harsh and powerful formation of his skull his face is soft.  Seeing that Loki could make no reply, he does.  “Once I spoke something .  In haste, without thinking of the consequences.  Even if I meant well.  I said I could protect him.  My baby brother.”  One set of arms curl together as if cradling a baby.  One hand of the other set rubs at the skin of his thigh.  There is a long, old, roping white scar there.  “I still hear his wails at times… I have dreams, nightmares where he's carried off piereced by the spear that Odin used to injure me...  So now I think, and keep my words so I can never hurt someone again.”

There are more long moments of silence.  Of water bubbling in the spring.  Of movements of the leaves on some type of wind.  

“I’m sorry,” is all Loki whispers.  He does not know if Byleistr heard him.  He will not repeat himself.

The two sat next to each other in silence.  They watch Cadeyrn and Helblindi talk.  The human is animated, using his hands while he talks.  Helblindi listens to him, more silent and stoic, but thoughtful.  Every now and then he nods, or says something in reply.  

“If...”  Loki starts.  He stops for a moment and then continues on.  “If you were captured somewhere, would Helblindi come for you?”

Byleistr is quiet for a long time.  He thinks of his life and family.  Of his older brother and what would have to happen that he would be in such danger.  But he knows Helblindi, the brother that has always been there since he was born, would come for him.  “Yes.”

So why hasn’t Thor come for him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another hint to Cadeyrn's background. 
> 
> Also, I almost posted this without some of the scene between Laufey and the Asgardian messenger. I got stuck in some of the dialogue and wrote ahead of it.


	6. Fun in the Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki gets to see Jotunheim in a whole new light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by the Noreaster that hit over the weekend and snowed me into the house. So enjoy people frolicking in the snow :P

That’s when Loki decided he was going to have to save himself.  While the logical, thinking part of him could understand why Odin’s hands were tied while he dealt with the political situation, to keep it from leading to war, the rest of him did not.  Why didn’t he and Thor just sweep in here, slaughter them all, and rescue him?  And yet… if that happened… how could he tell them in time to at least spare Cadeyrn?  Even now he had to admit that he had grown somewhat fond of the human.  He chalked it up to admiring the human’s craftiness that was similar to his own. 

And even more was the sudden idea that perhaps the frost giants did not deserve death.  He had always been taught that they had been monsters.  Yet here, from what he had seen…  They were just like them.  Worried about sickness or where they would get their food, coming together in marriage and having children.  Even Cadeyrn must have loved one of them enough to have three children by them…

He needed to get out of here.  Before more foolish thoughts began to invade his mind.  He knew how to get out of the palace by one way.  The heavily guarded hallway where one path went straight past the throne room, and another out to the audience chamber where Cadeyrn held judgment.  Perhaps doable but not ideal.  So Loki began to explore every inch of the cavern walls.  Was there another way out of here?  A crack in the stone or the ice he could slip through?  To his pleasant surprise he found one.

But his elation was short lived.  The hidden break in the wall only led to another, much smaller chamber.  It too was part of the garden and it was easy to guess why it was hidden.  In Cadeyrn’s working garden each plant had a purpose to feed or to heal.  Before, Loki had noted the lack of decorations or flowers.  They weren’t seen out there because they were tucked in here.  It was a bit of a shock to see the sudden array of color after growing used to the greens, blues, and whites of the rest of the place.  They grew steady and strong towards the sun filtering down through the icy ceiling.  Tall.  Short.  Wide blossoms.  Little clusters.  The flower garden reminded him a lot of his mother. 

Loki reached out to touch a brightly red rose nestled amongst its deep green leaves and found a hand clamping down on his wrist.  Shocked, he turned and found that the hand belonged to Cadeyrn.  He had not heard him even approach.  The green eyes were wide with shock, fear, and traces of anger.  The human swallowed heavily before he spoke to control himself.  “Please.  Don’t touch those.” 

“Why?” Loki half demanded, half wondered. 

Cadeyrn let out a slow breath and released his wrist.  “The flowers are… special.  They’re only grown for one purpose.  They’re not to be picked before then.”  Cadeyrn hoped that the answer was enough.  It wasn’t, since Loki’s own green eyes watched him for more.  “They are for Loptr… the anniversary is soon…”

“Oh…”  Of course.  The news makes sense.  To grow and keep the flowers for a lost child is a very parental thing to do.

Cadeyrn smiled softly in apology for grabbing him so suddenly.  “I should have told you before.  Especially since I know how nosy and inquisitive you are.  Anyway, I came down to ask you if you wanted to go out.”

The very idea is surprising to Loki.  Out?  Out where?  Back to the audience chamber, or the throne room?  Could Cadeyrn be speaking of going out into the weather?   Where the wind was wild and the snow was biting?  Cadeyrn saw his expression and laughed.  “The storm has passed over.  I thought you might like to see my home in the light of a clear day and get some fresh air.”

The human turned and slipped through the crack in the wall.  Loki followed behind.  There wasn’t anything better for him to do.  Besides, he was unwittingly providing Loki with just what he needed.  “What, by freezing my tail off and claiming I escaped?”

Cadeyrn laughed.  He walked into the room that Loki had been placed in and moved to one of the chests along the wall.  Opening it revealed piles of neatly folded clothes and cloaks, all lined with fur to be warm.  Tucked under the bed were a few pairs of boots in a similar fashion to be used in the snow.  He stood up and presented them to Loki.  “We’re about the same size so you can wear mine.”  His head nodded to the bed and Loki’s eyes followed. 

Laid out there were the clothes that he had arrived to Jotunheim in.  His leathers, his armor, the cloth his mother had woven with her own hands.  It had been missing since he had awoken, and he had figured that Cadeyrn had taken it off him to care for him.  He touched the sleeve where the frost giant had grabbed him in the battle, shattered and damaged from the icy touch.  “I had it cleaned for you.  Unfortunately, not much could be done to repair the vambrace and the leather there.” 

Loki knows that something is missing.  He remembers most of the battle and some of the moments leading up to his capture.  But the blow to his head had left some things fuzzy.  He knows that he had been grabbed there by one of Laufey’s warriors, that the icy touch was so strong and sudden it had snapped the armor there.  Then… then… nothing.  The next he knew they were withdrawing and he had to protect his brother and friends.  As much as he wants to don it, to wear something familiar and proclaim to all of them that he is Asgardian royalty, he knows it won’t be reasonable to the cold weather.  In the short time between arriving on Jotunheim and the end of the battle, even his magic had done little to keep up with the cold. 

“Thank you for returning it to me,”  Loki offered Cadeyrn as he took the human’s clothes.  Indeed, the shirt, pants, and cloak are all crafted with the weather in mind and very warm.  They are indeed of a similar size.  They almost feel tailor made for him.

“Of course,” Cadeyrn smiled back at the thanks.  He pulled on his boots and showed Loki how to tie them so snow wouldn’t fall in and soak his feet.  He tucked his long black hair beneath his cloak to have some control of it.  Gloves were tucked into pockets along with a cloth band that could be pulled around the head to cover the ears.  The last is a small tub of some type of soft paste that Cadeyrn instructed Loki to rub around his eyes.  “This will help you get used to the glare of the snow coming off the snow.  It can be a bit overwhelming at first.”

He wouldn’t need it since he could easily do the same with his magic, but Loki accepted it nonetheless.  But the moment they stepped outside the palace he could understand why.  The sun was sudden and bright.  It light up the visible world to a shining, white land.  Here and there, close by and far out in the distance, it was broken by the rising and falling of the land, by the blue juts of ice and the steely grey of stone.  He had never thought that Jotunheim had a sun he realized.  In his mind as a child, confirmed when the Bifrost had brought them here, that the world of the frost giants was always shadowy and dark.  It was crisp and cold enough for Loki to draw the hood up around his head, but without the wind of before it wasn’t that bad. 

More frost giants guarded the way that Cadeyrn brought them outside.  They seemed to be expecting them and nodded as they walked by.  Loki would not have seen the stairs leading upwards at first until Cadeyrn set his feet upon it.  It twisted upward following the natural curve of what must be the palace below them or the place it had been set upon.  As they climbed up he realized that the placement of the palace had been strategically placed on highest point in all the plain around them. 

Loki found he had to catch his breath a little when they came to the height of the stairs.  Cadeyrn lent him a hand to pull him up to where the footing became flat.  The wild and silly grin was back on his lips.  “Isn’t it beautiful?”  Cadeyrn said, arm sweeping out to present the realm to him.  “I mean, it seems all the same, especially when you grow up somewhere else with more seasons and colours.  But you just have to look for it.”

Standing next to Loki Cadeyrn pointed out all the things that could be seen from the high point.  The deep cavern where Thor and he had arrived before was to one side, protecting one entire side of the palace.  The human told him that it was said that Ymir had created the chasm when he had stepped there during a battle.  Off in the distance in another direction was a series of harsh and jutting mountains.  They were called the Black Spine due to their colour and the shadows they cast when the sun fell in a certain way.  Cutting through the plain on the other side of a palace was a gently curving river.  Loki was surprised that the water still flowed and was not frozen over in this realm and told Cadeyrn so. 

“Oh not everything is frozen here.  Where did you think we get our water from?”  Cadeyrn laughed good naturedly and motioned for Loki to follow him.  From here Loki could also study what they were standing upon.  At first he had thought it a bluff or a piling of snow atop a glacier.  But the more he looked the more he saw.  Towers spiraled up towards the sky, rising above thick walls starting to crumble in places.  Hidden by the decades of ice and snow that had fallen atop it, it took a long time for Loki to realize he was indeed looking upon the whole of the palace of Laufey-King.  While it might not have been the size of his home in Asgard, it must have been beautiful in its time. 

Moving between what remained of a series of walls put them out in another open area what was protected on all sides.  Clear, blue ice stretched out beneath their feet.  Loki would see for dozens of feet under him.  Byleistr stood in the middle of it.  His four arms moved in a rhythmic pattern and it was soon revealed he was manipulating the newly fallen snow to move away from the ice.  “Thank you Byleistr~” Cadeyrn greeted his son as he skated over.  Loki would not admit that he wobbled here and there for a few moments, but he was not as elegant as Cadeyrn as he moved on the ice.  “I know the snow doesn’t block that much light, but plants like to get as much as they can.”

Wait…  Loki looked down past his feet again.  Could this be the same ice that formed the ceiling of the cavern?  How thick could it be?  Had he been really so deep within the palace?  This was where the light came from?  There wasn’t much time to wonder on it for Cadeyrn suddenly yelped and was sliding across the ice. 

“Hey!”  Cadeyrn shifted his weight and turned as he slid so he was facing the jotun.  “I asked if you would help and you said yes.”

Byleistr chuckled and grinned.  He had purposely sent his father slipping across the ice.  He made a few grumbling noises but even Loki could hear it was similar to the sound of a child pretending to whine about something they didn’t want to do.  Once Cadeyrn stopped he moved so that he had enough momentum to start moving back towards the frost giant.  He mimicked stating, picking up speed until he was zipping past Loki and slamming into Byleistr’s leg with all his weight.  The frost giant wasn’t moved an inch. 

The frost giant laughed, a big booming sound, and pushed the human with two of his hands.  Cadeyrn slid once again across the ice backwards until he hit the snow bank along the side and tumbled over it.  The frost giant then looked to Loki.  There was play in his eyes.  “No.”  Loki said firmly.  He was having enough trouble just standing on the slippery surface.  And he was not going to be pushed around like a plaything. 

Byleistr shrugged his massive shoulders and turned to see where his father had gone.  The moment his head was turned a snowball sailed through the air.  It smashed across the back of his head and neck.  Suddenly Cadeyrn was at Loki’s side and dumping a pile of snowballs into his shocked arms.  When Byleistr turned to see who had thrown it, Cadeyrn played the innocent and pointed at the Asgardian prince.  “Loki did it.”

“I did not!” 

The frost giant seemed ready to believe his father over their guest, for his eyes narrowed in Loki’s directions.  The frost giant grinned wickedly and worked his fingers, snow suddenly appearing between them to form into snowballs.  Cadeyrn laughed and started running for cover, arming himself with snowballs hidden under his cloak.  Loki barely had time to dodge the first one before another hit the ice of his feet.  “Hey!  You can’t just leave me out here!” 

Loki desperately slipped and slid over the ice until he managed to get close to firmer snow.  One ball nailed him square in the back and sent him tumbling head first.  “Oh that’s it,” Loki growled as he spat out the snow in his mouth.  He flipped on his back and used the momentum to toss one of the snowballs shoved on him against the frost giant.  It sailed past Byleistr’s ear as the frost giant bent to get the more ready snow. 

Soon the entire area was a flurry of snowballs lopped back and forth.  Loki had fought against both of them:  Cadeyrn for getting him into his mess and Byleistr for following along.  But he soon found himself teamed up with the human.  They ducked behind the rocks like protective fortress walls, popping out only to throw their ammo at the enemy.  Byleistr played along for a while before he got tired of hitting the walls instead of them and started sneaking close. 

“Ah!  Invasion!  Quick, Loki!  We must escape!”  Cadeyrn darted out from behind his wall and grabbed Loki’s hand.  They sped across the snow, dodging the weapons still thrown at them.  Breaking between two juts of ice Loki saw that they were quickly approaching the edge of the rise.  Cadeyrn slowed only to jump something that had been hidden just out of a sight. 

“C-Cadeyrn!  We’re not going down there.”  There was a hill down to the plain, but it was far too steep.  Cadeyrn didn’t pause to listen to him and only pulled him on the sled behind him.  Loki only have enough time to clutch him about the waist before they were flying down the hill, just escaping the heavy footsteps behind them.  It wasn’t all that fun, really.  Oh no, it wasn’t all that fast.  What did it look like?  Ok, fine, Loki had his face buried in Cadeyrn’s back in terror.  They rammed into the thicker snow at the base of the hill and the two were sent tumbling over each other in the snow.

Loki found himself laughing.  Laughing at the fun and laughing along with the sound of Cadeyrn’s voice. 

Until Byleistr caught up with them.  He had tucked himself into a ball and rolled down the hill.  At the base he popped up and, in one smooth motion, caught Cadeyrn up and tossed him up into the sky.  The human flailed for a moment like a bird.  Then he fell with his back down into the deep snow, and disappeared.  Byleistr stood with all four arms clutching himself around the waist, laughing how he had gotten his revenge. 

Cadeyrn failed to reappear above the snow.

The laughter trailed over.  “Dad?” Byleistr spoke.  When that failed to make him appear the frost giant ran over to the hole.  He crouched and leaned over it, looking in to see where Cadeyrn had went.

“Ha!”  Cadeyrn popped out.  He slammed an armload of snow over Byleistr’s head.  “I win~” 

Byleistr snorted and pursed his lips.  Reaching into the hole he pulled his father out.  He shook the snow clinging to the cloak before setting him down in the shallow snow next to Loki.  Cadeyrn only kept on smiling as he ran his hands over his head to calm his hair.  He turned the smile to Loki.  “Want to keep going?  There are other things I can show you.”

Loki rolled his eyes and flopped back into the snow.  No.  He was not going to admit that that had been pretty fun.  “I guess so.  Just please.  No more unfair snow-battles against frost giants.”  The frost giant huffed above him as the human helped him up.  Two against one wasn’t all that fair.  But he allowed it since even together Loki and his father didn’t come close to his size. 

Cadeyrn led them to a large building built near the base of the palace.  It was soon easy to see that it served the same purpose as a guard barrack.  Dozens of frost giants practiced and sparred.  Cadeyrn led them to a place to sit somewhat above the training grounds and watch.  Byleistr brought them something to snack on, a type of meat dried in strips.  At least it wasn’t frozen as he might expect.  It was soon evident why Cadeyrn had brought him to watch such a thing. 

Helblindi was out among those practicing.  He was easy to spot; the single head of raven black hair amongst the bald or shades of hair that matched the snowy world around them.  He wielded something like a scythe made out of the ice many jotun seemed able to summon.  He was quick on his feet and easily defeated those who had the advantage of weight against him.  The thrill of battle raced raced through his ruby eyes.  It wasn’t unlike watching Thor and the Warriors Four spar with the guards and each other back in Asgard.  But it was like watching giant trees or boulders going at each other.  Their blows echoed around them.  The ground shook at their running.  Loki was soon able to understand why even his father had trouble against them.

The drill eventually drew to a close.  The jotuns drew back from each other, stretching and lingering or move into groups to talk.  Helblindi dispelled his weapon.  He moved to the sidelines and drew close to a smaller frost giant.  He appeared younger, with white hair that trailed off into a deep blue.  Helblindi talked softly with him, and soon began showing him how to stand his ground and to better hold his weapon.  The smaller frost giant had not been doing well in the drill and showed his inexperience.  He listened raptly to Cadeyrn’s soon.  The rapt attention soon turned to a purple blush when Helblindi took his wrists to position them better on his spear. 

“Hey!”  A shout came across the grounds.  A thicker, older jotun stormed towards the pair.  His grey blue hair was short, growing down in something like sideburns along the sides of his face.  Four short yet pointed horns grew on his head.  “Don’t you talk to him!”

Helblindi looked over his shoulder.  A smirk slowly twisted his lips and a wicked look gleamed in his eye.  “What is it, Hyrrokkin?  I was just helping Jarnsaxa with how to better use his weapon.”  He didn’t even try to hide it.  There was a telling in the way he spoke that he wasn’t just talking about the spear.  The thicker jotun, Hyrrokkin, growled furiously and launched himself at Helblindi.

The rest of the frost giants drew into a loose ring around the two.    It wasn’t so much of a fist fight but it was certainly a brawl.  They grappled for each other’s hands.  They seemed to want to throw each other back or off balance.  At one point they were locked together, arms bent and legs straining.  Helblindi craned back his head and surged forward with a deafening crack of his horns against Hyrrokkin’s skull.  The other jotun lost his focus, weakening and stumbling to one side.  He tried to recover and surged his own horns at Helblindi’s face.  Ah.  Now Loki could see the advantage the different types could have.  Hyrrokkin’s thin horns were made for stabbing and working past the other’s defense if he got close enough.  Helblindi’s ram-like horns were made for cracking and stunning.  Beside him, Cadeyrn groaned and rubbed his eyes with one hand.

“By that sigh, this is not the first occurrence of this jotun causing trouble with your son,” Loki observed.

“You are correct.”  Cadeyrn nodded.  He pointed across the field to his son’s opponent.  “That is Hyrrokkin, a soldier from the war that trains the younger generations.  And the one they fight over,” he pointed to the smaller jotun who looked on with wide eyes, “is Jarnsaxa.  He is younger than Helblindi and rather new here.  Helblindi likes him, or so he claims, but Hyrrokkin seems to want to claim him himself.  They end up tumbling about like this more often than not.”  It was plain to hear the longsuffering father in Cadeyrn’s words. 

“I see.”  With that Loki rose to his feet and approached the sparring ground.  Within a few beats Cadeyrn and Byleistr were soon following.  By the time he got within reach Helblindi had cracked the other jotun several times on the head with his horns.  “You know,” Loki shouted up at them.  Surprised at the interruption the two paused, “Things would be greatly simplified if you just stopped beating around the bush and just sleep together.”  He had to choose some politer words than “just fuck already” but the widened eyes meant everyone had gotten his point.

Hyrrokkin’s wide eyes soon turned to narrow slits.  How dare an outsider speak of such a thing.  “How dare you!”  He turned to Helblindi, hoping the raven haired jotun would deny it as well.  Helblindi just grinned back in that wicked way of his.  Then, he laughed.  He had the audacity to throw back his head and laugh!  There was little face for Hyrrokkin to save by scurrying away, yet he did. 

“Ha!”  Helblindi bent and patted Loki on the back.  He remembered at the last moment to draw back his strength so he only made the Asgardian stumble.  “We’ve been at it for months and you make him finally see it in one glance.  I like you~” 

Loki straightened his cloak as he stepped out of Helblindi’s reach.  “Why didn’t you just say it to him in the first place?”

“I did!”  Helblindi huffed.  “He didn’t take me seriously.”

“And so you played that your affections were elsewhere?”

“In a way.  I mean, Jarnsaxa is cute and all.  Maybe it can be the three of us.  But right now?  I want Hyrrokkin.”  Wait.  When had Loki suddenly been made referee to a Jotun’s bedding life.  He turned to Cadeyrn.  His green eyes pleaded with the human to get him out of the mess. 

“Well, now that it is quite publicly known he will finally decide either way.”  Cadeyrn motioned for his sons to follow them.  They moved out of the barracks and back towards the palace.  “So, what have you discovered?”

The request revealed that Cadeyrn spoke of something else.  The playful smile went from Helblindi’s face and his expression turned serious.  “It is as the two of you expected.  There are discontents gathering together, hoping to make a move on the throne.  They raid and pillage those around them.  Attacks and rumors place them at the southern end of the Black Spine.  I would not put it past them to cause war by attacking Asgard themselves and allowing the blame to fall on Laufey-King.” 

“Hmm,” Cadeyrn hummed.  He crossed his arms over his chest.  His eyes watched the snow in front of his moving feet.  “We will have to make certain.  Moving people along the path, attacking Asgard without cause, knowing that would make them answer against the King, is awfully clever for bandits.  But then, it seems that way since no one has ever done it before.”

They had just stepped past the guards and back into the palace when Cadeyrn addressed Loki.  “You’ll have to come with us.”

His sons nearly stumbled in their walk and turned to demand what he meant.  Loki, however, knew.  He knew Cadeyrn was looking into Asgard’s claim that jotuns had broken into their realm.  From all that Loki had seen, he had to admit it was unlikely that Laufey was behind it.  But his own thoughts and observations wouldn’t be enough, even for himself.  Cadeyrn had claimed that bandits, rogues, were responsible.  It would be easy to claim such, or to leave a while under the appearance of investigating.  Loki, as the only Asgardian there, would have to go with them to see it for himself.  Whether it was the truth or not, it would be his word his father would trust…. If Odin ever came…

Loki nodded his agreement.  A tiny smile appeared on Cadeyrn’s lips.  “Good.”  He turned to his sons.  “I’ll go inform Laufey.  I trust the preparations to your care.  If I provide the cloak, boots, and replacement vambrace, is your Asgardian armor enough should we come under attack.”

“Of course.”  Loki wouldn’t trust his safety to the minimal clothing that the jotun wore, or the fabrics of Cadeyrn despite their warmth.  With a final nod Cadeyrn left deeper into the palace.  Though they hesitated a moment, Helblindi and Byleistr soon led Loki into a side room.  Reaching up into a tall cabinet, Helblindi pulled down a small knife belt.  Loki’s knives.  “I’ll suppose you’ll be wanting these back.”  Loki almost threw a remark in the jotun’s face, but he could see that even his enemy would not want him to walk into something unarmed. 

The older brother moved to pack bags with provisions for the journey while Byleistr left the room.  He soon returned, carrying Loki’s armor as well as two sets of cloaks and boats.  Loki dressed in whatever privacy he could find in the room.  It had been well taken care of, cleaned and the tears from battle repaired.  The one sleeve was hopeless and would have to be covered.  He settled his knives back in their places and calm came over him.  It was good to have them back.  He briefly contemplated trying to hide one somewhere so it could not be taken from him, but the thought that Cadeyrn should be back by now took over. 

When Cadeyrn did return Loki looked on him in surprise.  The pale blue lines beneath his pale skin that he had seen once before were back again.  Now, they were singing.  There was a fading flush to his cheeks and he licked a small white bead off the corner of his mouth.  He was dressed in a form fitting battle outfit that allowed for free movement of his arms and legs.  So used to seeing Cadeyrn in his following robes it was strange to see him in pants.  The outfit was a dark grayish-black with accents of blue and green.  Over all of it was the spikes and weaves of a pattern of icy white.  Like frost over a pane of glass in winter.  Cadeyrn only had to pass nearby to reveal that it was indeed frost. 

“Come Father.”  Helblindi held out a hand to the human and helped him sit on an elevated stone in one part of the room.  The motion seemed odd to Loki.  He only had to wait to see what they were doing.  Byleistr positioned himself behind Cadeyrn, combs in two of his hands.  The four hands were soon at work in the long black hair, combing and soothing it.  Helblindi had moved and retrieved a container from another cabinet along with a small… paintbrush. 

He opened the container and dipped the paintbrush inside, stirring the contents.  He held it above for a moment to drip, and it dripped blue paint.  He crouched in front of Cadeyrn until they were level.  One hand gently tilted his father’s head and the other drew the blue paint over his face.  For someone so large and fierce looking, the movements were somehow both delicate and intimate.  He followed the glowing blue lines beneath Cadeyrn’s skin.  His forehead, his cheeks, and his chin.  He opened the top of his shirt so the markings could be traced down his to his chest and around to the back of his neck.  Helblindi blew over it to help it dry.  He even traced the lines on the back of Cadeyrn’s hands and up his forearms despite most of it would not be seen. 

Byleistr tied off Cadeyrn’s hair just when Helblindi finished painting.  The black hair was drawn back away from his face and into a tight braid.  The blue paint blended into the lines of under his skin and stood out in a highly visible contrast.  The human turned to Loki, and that was when Loki realized three things.  Standing between his two sons, Loki could see that the lines on Cadeyrn and the lines on his sons were almost identical.  However, Loki knew he had seen the lines somewhere else before, but where?

And lastly, out of his robes and with his hair in a war-braid, Loki slowly got the feeling that he had seen Cadeyrn somewhere before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Loki looking past his preconceptions about the Jotuns and finally beginning to realize something that could change his life?


	7. Bandits

The little family did not take note of the way Loki stared at them.  Helblindi retrieved the wide box that housed his sire’s weapons.  Cadeyrn chose the long knives he always used, and spent his time deciding which throwing daggers to take with him.  He could see his sire’s lips pursing and growled at him.  Father-King knew how much Cadeyrn considered his knives; each had been carefully crafted or selected by Laufey himself.  But as much as he loved the knives, his sire had gotten the idea into his head that perhaps he should sell them and use the money to aid Jotunheim.  He had already done so with many of the jewels and beautiful clothing that had once adorned him.  But Laufey refused to allow his mate to go weaponless.

Cadeyrn wrapped the chosen knife belt around his waist before he looked to his own vambraces.  He looked up at his eldest son in question whether or not to take them.  Helblindi nodded.  Cadeyrn pulled them on and secured the straps before twisted his hand in a certain way.  The hidden blades sprang forward.  Helblindi could not help but smile.  There was a reason his father was called the Fang of Laufey.  The idea for the hidden blades had come to Cadeyrn after someone had tried to hurt Helblindi as a baby, not wanting a mixed-blood as heir to the throne, and he and Laufey had made them together.  

Cadeyrn withdrew the blades and selected am arm sleeve as well as a normal vambrace to replace the ones Loki had lost.  Once again they fit Loki well.  The Asgardian studied what he could see of the weapons Cadeyrn carried on his forearm.  He had not seen anything like the hidden blades before.  Now he had seen them he marveled that no one had thought of it before.  It was clever as well as an excellent back up if one lost the weapons in their hands.  Of course it would probably mean having to learn a different way to fight, but Loki would definitely have the smiths look into fashioning a pair for himself once he returned.  

The thoughts of how to spring the blades back and forth as well as how to protect his fingers consumed his inquisitive mind so much Loki didn’t realize that they were back out on the snowy plain again.  They would have to cover a decent distance to find a bandit’s hide out.  How were they going to cover the distance in this snow?  Two of them were not frost giants and would struggle through snow if it were more than a foot or two.  

“Ever ridden a snow leopard before?”  Cadeyrn asked.  There was a grin on his face and a laugh in his voice.  He knew before asking that Loki had not.  He had never even seen one in real life.  Only as a mythical creature seen only in ancient books.  He turned so his call would echoed off the icy walls of the palace and let loose a high pitched whistle that sucked the air from his chest.  The sound echoed over the plain, towards a great jutting pile of ice and rocks in the distance.  “We can start walking.  They’ll catch up with us soon enough.”

“Snow Leopards still exist?”  Loki could not help the wonder in his voice.

“Yes.  While they are very suited to the cold and snow of our realm, their numbers have suffered as well since the Casket was taken.”  Helblindi answered for his father.  He walked before them, his and Byleistr’s powerful legs plowing a path in the snow so it was easier for the other two.  They travelled forward with the shifting snow the only sound, until powerful thuds sounded to their sides.

Looking up, Loki saw two forms bounding over the snow towards them.  Soon they were close enough that he could see what they were.  Two great cats with long tails and giant paws that allowed them to walk atop the snow.  Their coats were a soft grey and white, broken here and there by smaller black spots and rosettes.  The tails were much longer and thicker than what Loki was used to seeing on a cat.  If they were still against the snow or even rocks Loki knew he would have a hard time seeing them.  While not the same height of a horse, they were nearly the same size.  The larger one approached Cadeyrn and mewed in greeting before butting their head against him.  

Cadeyrn chuckled and buried his cheek in the fur while scratching along the jaw.  “Hello there, Aruna.”  The leopard made a strange buffing sound deep in its throat while wrapped around him.  “Loki, this is Aruna, a she-leopard.  That is her nearly grown male-cub, Misha.”  At the mention of his name, and seeing that Loki had turned to him, the smaller leopard chirped happily before bouncing over to him.  He seemed to think that if Loki was with Cadeyrn he was a beloved and most welcome playmate.  He bounded around him and gently swatted at his legs.  Despite the rather teenage behavior Loki was thrilled to even have a snow leopard before him.  “How do you know them?  I thought they lived in the high mountains and were very elusive.”

“They are usually.  Aruna stays nearby because she finds it safe, and I think she views me as a second mother.  She was attacked by an Ísabrotdýr after having her first litter, I got there in time to chase it off.  I nursed her and the cubs back to health.”  He moved to her side and felt along her belly.  He motioned for Loki to come by him and do the same.  Watching Aruna’s face Loki felt along her soft, thick fur down to her belly.  Something fluttered and kicked against his hand.  He drew back with a gasp.  Cadeyrn nodded, “She’s having another litter in a few weeks time.”

The human moved to stand by the snow leopard’s shoulder.  He buried one hand in the fur near her neck and in one smooth motion leapt to straddle her shoulders.  With her size, a natural seat was formed there.  Cadeyrn must have ridden her before for the snow leopard wasn’t even fazed by it.  “It might take Misha a few moments to get used to your weight, but he’ll carry you.”  Normally Cadeyrn would simply ride on Helblindi’s shoulders or Byleistr’s arms for such a trip.  But since Loki was accompanying them he had decided to use the leopards in deference to his being an outsider.  

A few moments was an understatement as Loki found out.  It took him several tries to get on the leopard’s shoulder.  Misha wiggled and tried to get Loki off, rolling his legs as if they were wrestling.  It took one motherly swat for the cub to behave.  “Tuck  you legs here, and take a handhold in the thick fur.  Just lean forward slightly as they run and the wind won’t be as bad.”

Loki could soon see what Cadeyrn had chosen the leopards as their transport.  Their wide paws acted like snow shoes, allowing them to run across the surface of the snow.  The long thick tails acted like a rudder if they needed to rapidly change direction.  This allowed them to be nearly as swift as a horse.  He wondered briefly how the two jotuns would be able to keep up, but a quick glance over his shoulder showed that they were running alongside them.  Their endurance against the snow and the distance was admirable.

They soon arrived among the roots of the Black Spine.  The mountains towered over them in wickedly sharpened spires.  Canyons and passes allowed for movement among them, and numerous narrow ledges raced up and down the canyon walls.  The group slowed the deeper they made into the Spine and the jotuns moved in front of the group.  At one point Cadeyrn dismounted and whispered in Aruna’s ear.  She took her cub and bounded up the nearly sheer face of the mountainside, finding and holding her route in the ancient ways of her kind.  Before they moved further Helblindi bent down and touched the boats of both Cadeyrn and Loki.  Frost spread over them, much like the pattern on Cadeyrn’s clothes, and it only took a few steps to reveal that it allowed them to also move on the top layer of snow with ease.  

Cadeyrn walked between his sons, leaving Loki slightly behind.  He did not need to speak to let him know that he did not wish him to get hurt, despite understanding he could take care of himself.  They had only moved a short distance down another canyon before things began to move in the shadows and behind the boulders.  Suddenly a tall jotun stepped out to block their path several yards in front of them.  Cadeyrn took a few more steps, making sure he was obviously seen, before stopping himself.  The jotun eyed him for a moment before booming in a harsh voice, “You are trespassing on clan lands, puny human.”

Cadeyrn didn’t even blink.  He showed no fear or intimidation at the fierce presentation the jotun made.  He made sure to keep his arms from crossing, but allowed them to see his weapons.  “I am Cadeyrn, Quen to Laufey-King.  He has sent me to investigate reports of bandit activity in the area.  These are our sons, Helblindi and Byleistr, sent to assist me.”

Murmurs of ‘the quen’ and ‘the fang’ passed through the gathered bandits.  The leader grinned at the statement, revealing wicked teeth that had been filed to points.  “Aw, look at them boys!”  He swept his arms for his men to see.  “The princes sent along to protect their tiny weak sire.  What, your precious mate can’t come himself?  How have you kept him safe on the throne, I wonder…  One would think Asgard would have immediately moved after the little gift we sent them…”

Loki kept his own reaction contained.  Cadeyrn had made no mention of the attack on Asgard.  The bandits had readily provided the information for him.  And it was in such a way that he wanted them to know.  Because he thought they would never survive to pass along the information.  “Did you never think that it could have brought war on the entire realm once again?  But then, you have already demonstrated your lack of care for your fellow jotun by sending your very men to their deaths.”

The jotun only shrugged.  “They served their purpose.  Not well enough if Laufey still lives.  I’ll have to rectify that.  He will be easy prey, though, knowing his mate and sons have already passed on to the ice before him.”  That was the end of the negotiations.  There would be no other move they could take to prevent battle.  Cadeyrn had to not only protect himself, his sons, and Loki, but he had to protect the safety of his mate and realm.  He twirled the long knives into his hands and waited for the bandit leader to make the first move.  He brandished his own giant weapon, bellowing his followers to join him in bloody battle.  

Cadeyrn did not shy or fall back.  Loki expected him to move behind the safety that his sons provided.  Instead he was right in the forefront.  The leader and several others went straight for him under the idea that the smallest would be the easiest to kill.  He easily dodged the heavy weapon hefted in his direction, leaving one occupied picking it up while two more ran into him.  Cadeyrn easily ran under his legs, knives flashing to sever the muscles on the inner sides and the backs of his knees.  The jotun shrieked and crumbled forward, the pain only ceasing when the blades slipped several times between his vertebrae.  A second reached down to grab him and Cadeyrn danced once more of his reach, this time slicing both weapons over his hands across the jotun’s stomach.  

The human was always moving.  The frost giants certainly had the height and the power.  But since he was so small Cadeyrn had the chance to slip past the defenses by going underneath.  Areas of the body someone would not think to guard against a similar sized opponent were wide open to him.  If there was a chance he switched to his throwing knives, often finding their target between the ribs or in the corner of their eyes.  His ability and skill seemed so unexpected when compared to the gentle, soft spoken man that had nursed him back to health.  But fighting near him allowed Loki to unconsciously observe.  Though Cadeyrn fought, he did not take bloody delight in battle as Thor might.  He knew his skill and he knew his strength.  He only used it because he needed to.  Not to have fun or to show off his prowess.  

But there was one thing even Loki had to admit:  Cadeyrn was beautiful in battle.  

Loki fought as well.  He used his own daggers and his magic, combining what had worked in his first battle on Jotunheim with what he observed the human target.  The jotuns still only seemed to manipulate magic that were connected to their icy world.  They did not expect the other elements nor the illusions he wielded.  There was also an element of surprise on his side.  The bandits had been so focused on Cadeyrn and his sons they had not seen a forth man present.  One that was just as small as the human.  More than once he took advantage of a bandit who stood trying to figure out if there were two humans or just one.  

Helblindi and Byleistr fought like two ferocious beasts.  While not obviously placing themselves so they enemy would notice they kept the more difficult opponents away from their father.  The horns that the elder had used to spar before now crushed the unprotected skulls of his enemies.  His scythe sung through the air, battering and shattering weapons.  The bandits found it hard to halt the momentum that came with Byleistr’s size.  With his two sets of arms he could often take on two bandits at once.  Or one set would clutch them while the other tore at their limbs or head.  At one moment, pressed back against a wall, Loki thought he would have trouble, then two feline shapes sprang on the jotun, growling and tearing with their claws.  

The leader bellowed in triumph and held his prize aloft.  He shook Cadeyrn clutched in his hands.  The long knives were stuck in his body:  one in his thigh and the other in his chest.  Cadeyrn did not yelp or cry out.  He made at struggling to escape the hand only to wait until part of the leader was within reach.  A well aimed kick crumpled the jotun’s nose.  Gushing blood the bandit leader growled and pulled Cadeyrn close to punish him.  It was a mistake that would cost him.  The moment he was within reach Cadeyrn sprang the hidden blade and slashed it across his throat.  The grip grew slack and Cadeyrn rode the body down as it fell to the snow.  After the leader fell the battle was soon over.  Not one of the bandits had tried to desert.  Even if they had they would have been captured and dragged back to the palace to face whatever fate lay there.

Cadeyrn wiped the blood spatter from his face.  He glared down at the leader beneath his feet.  His words were low in his throat as he hissed at him.  “That’s what you deserve for threatening Laufey my mate and bringing turmoil to my realm.”  With smooth pulls he withdrew his long knives from the body and cleaned them in the snow.  

The adrenaline rushing through his body allowed his mind to string it all together.  How a human had come to be on Jotunheim and hold the status he had.  How he had come to be protected in the heart of the palace.  The way he was protected by the guards, how he had calmed Laufey after the messenger, and how his two sons called also be called princes.  The lines on Helblindi and Byleistr were the familial lines tying them to Laufey and the human; the lines on Cadeyrn were identical to Laufey.  And Quen.  He had thought it some title in the Jotun language that did not translate in the Alltongue that had been given to Cadeyrn.  No.  Quen was a manipulation of the word queen.  

“Queen.  You’re their queen!”  Loki accused.  Now everything he had seen made sense.  Cadeyrn was not a fellow captive.  He was a beloved member of the royal family and the palace.  The people had come to the audience not to talk to a placeholder sent to deal with them or pass things along, but to come before their queen.  

Cadeyrn’s only answer was the knowing smile on his face.  He had known Loki had not figured it out.  In fact, he had allowed him to remain in the dark.  “I’ll admit, I really should have said something right in the beginning.  But I couldn’t help myself.  I wanted to see how long it would take you to figure it out.”

“And they… they’re…”  Loki could only stare at Helblindi and Byleistr.  The two jotuns called him father.  While they appeared frost giants they had part of their blood from a human parent.  And the other parent had been Laufey, King of Jotunheim, making them princes.  But… how?  Cadeyrn was so small!  How could he ever take a jotun’s size to get their seed and then carry the giant child, or be enough to top a frost giant.

“Our sons.  I am their sire and Laufey is their dam.” 

Loki covered his face as his mind betrayed him and tried to provide the images.  He heard Helblindi chuckling “Look at him blush!”  Byleistr shushed him.  “That’s not fair, ‘blindi.”

Softer footsteps approached him.  He looked up to see the human standing in front of him.  Apology was written across his face.  “Sorry.  I did not foresee how much this would surprise you.  However, I hope you can understand why Laufey would not want knowledge of my existence to be known outside the realm.  Especially considering the end of the war…”

It made sense.  Cadeyrn, in a way, was a foreign spouse.  There were always people in a realm or place that believed in the pure blood of the throne.  There could certainly be threats from their own people.  But there could also be ones outside the realm, those who wanted the position for themselves or to hurt a ruler through them.  Then, too, was the advantage of having someone close to them that could remain hidden.  By Hel, Loki had his fingers in many of the realms and he had never heard of Cadeyrn.  He doubted that Heimdall and even his father had either.  

But why would Laufey never use him?  That’s what Loki’s mind twisted around as they examined the area and eventually the bandits’ hideout.  True Cadeyrn had little use by way of magic.  However his small and willowy stature compared to the frost giants hid a skilled warrior.  His mind was crafty as well, thinking of ways to help or end things that were outside of the box.  Laufey viewed him as an asset… and more.  Laufey kept him well cared for and protected.  They had even had three children together.  Was it possible… that a frost giant could love?

~*~*~

“Is everything alright?”  Loki had felt the human draw up next to him on Aruna.  The green eyes were shining with concern.  Cadeyrn had taken note of Loki’s silence since the bandit attack.  After they had made certain that there were none left in the hiding place in the Spine the little group had moved to the surrounding settlements.  There they had gathered that the bandits had been raiding them for several weeks.  The raiding had started after the people had refused to help them with some type of scheme they had been plotting.  It was only more evidence that the bandits were truly the ones behind the assault on Asgard.  Cadeyrn revealed that there was a secret branch of Yggdrasil nearby, one that could be used to travel between realms, that not even those who lived nearby knew about.

The night before, resting in a room offered to them by the grateful townspeople, Loki contemplated using the secret pathway to escape.  Everyone else was sleeping.  An impromptu feast had been thrown in gratitude for the help Cadeyrn and the group had given.  The jotun had partied just as any other people might.  Singing, music, dancing, stories of feats and praises of thanks.  Now the settlement slept.  Cadeyrn lay curled between his sons, almost like a baby compared to them.  Loki quietly sat up to watch and contemplate them, but then one ruby eye of Helblindi’s popped open to watch him.  The two had stared at each other before Loki had settled back down.  

Why wasn’t he trying to escape?  There would not be much trouble in it.  There were only three of them now.  And he knew now it was highly unlikely any of them would be able to withstand his magic.  Yet there were other ways as well.  Somehow, without him noticing, Cadeyrn and he had become something resembling friends.  He also knew what Cadeyrn searched for the most.  How easy it would be for him to weave his silvertongue and promise that, if Cadeyrn allowed him to return or escape, he would use all of his resources to find Cadeyrn’s missing son.  

He couldn’t.

“I think the snow cat has his tongue~”  Helblindi teased.  Misha growled in return, as if he understood the accusation.

Cadeyrn sent him a warning stare.  He trusted the snow leopard beneath him to keep their course.  His hands rested on his thighs.  “… were you expecting us to still be behind it?”  He offered fully expecting that Loki might accuse him.  He was allowing it.

 “I am just... thinking.  The longer I stay here, the more I find myself having to rethink things.”  Loki shook his head.  It was a quiet revelation.  He could not understand what had possessed him to speak it out loud.  Damn it!  The longer he stayed here the more he found himself changing.  He let his guard down around these people.  Could it be… was it a possibility that he found himself liking this world and these people?

Do you want us to go back to the secret pathway and allow you to return home?  Cadeyrn nearly spoke it out loud until the surroundings stopped him.  Something was off.  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.  Aruna stiffened under his legs.  He only had time to shout half a warning before the rocks to their side exploded.  Aruna reared to protect her cub.  The human tumbled from her back and into the snow.  Stones thudded around him, drowned out by the ice-cracking roar of the beast.

“Ísabrotdýr!”  Helblindi screamed as he summoned his scythe.  Curse the beast!  How had he not noticed it?  There had not been any signs of its territory or that they had been drawing close to its den.  But the Ice-Breaker’s hide was colored to blend in to its surroundings and laid down little scent.  That would explain how the snow leopards, plus the slight wind blowing away from the group, had missed it until it was too late.  The deadly jaws clamped down on his weapon, claws trying to reach past it, as the jotun struggled to see where his father and brother were.  

Aruna was shielding her cub, warning it away in her own language as she readied to pounce on its back.  Byleistr was yanking at the beast’s back leg in a desperate attempt to get it off his brother.  Loki was on his feet, magic racing around his hands, trying to see where to strike.  Relief caught in the eldest prince’s throat as his father stood.  It quickly faded as Cadeyrn hissed in pain as he put his weight on one leg.  

The Ísabrotdýr heard the sound and leapt in his direction.  It could immediately sense the weakest in the group.  Cadeyrn’s knives were in his hands.  He crouched, mind whirling.  He only had a few options and none of them guaranteed he could make it out of the crushing paws of the wild beast.  Images of his mate and his children flashed before his eyes.  For a brief moment his heart raced with fear.  He wished Laufey were here.  He wished he could have seen Helblindi and Byleistr safely to their own mates.  He wished he could have held and kissed Loptr one more time—

Blazing magic slammed into the side of the beast.  It skid to a halt in its tracks, giving Cadeyrn just enough time to scramble to cover.  Loki glared at it and summoned his magic again.  Alright.  Calm.  Think.  The last time, the first time, he had seen one of these things was when they had been trying to escape before.  Thor had been the one to take it down by barreling a hole through its head.  Green eyes caught their counterparts in Cadeyrn to make sure he made it to safety.  The beast wavered between the two smaller targets and ignored the blows on its flanks by the two jotun.  

“Come on,” Loki goaded it, firing another blast in a hope to take out its eyes.  The blow only angered it.  It bellowed and leapt into the air.  Loki dodged its likely landing area and fired at its belly.  It howled in pain and struck out blindly.  The deadly claws caught him in the back, ripping and tearing.  The only thing that saved him, and nearly killed him, was the thick cloak given to him by Cadeyrn.  It tangled around the beast’s claws, but the ties yanked at Loki’s neck until his desperate fingers freed it.  

The Asgardian turned—and found himself falling.  Deafening cracks filled the air.  The ground beneath him split and tumbled.  The ice under the snow had broken under the beast’s weight and given out, falling into deep chasm.  Loki frantically threw himself at the growing wall.  He just managed a handhold on the more solid ground before the ice under his feet crumbled completely.  He tried to pull himself up, and froze.

The beast was waiting for him.  It was toying, playing.  It’s lips drew back over it’s fangs and it lunging for the killing blow.

“LOKI!”

Magic exploded above him.  Wind sucked out of its lungs.  Fire raced down its throat.  Lights flashed in its eyes.  Lightning tore across its face, ripping flesh and spilling blood.  The magic was wild and powerful, unthought and out of control.  It was so sudden, so cruel, the beast twisted around to fight it and tumbled into the widening hole.  

Something skidded in the snow above him and arms appeared.  They locked onto his wrists.  So solid and powerful they would not let him go.  “Hold on Loki.  I got you!”  Cadeyrn was half crouched and half on his belly at the lip of the chasm.  The green of his eyes glowed so brightly the pupils could not be seen.  Magic rolled of his skin so thickly Loki could taste it on his tongue.  The two jotuns appeared as well and soon had both Cadeyrn and Loki pulled to safety.  

“Are you ok?  Did the claws get to you?  Turn around!  Let me see.”  Cadeyrn couldn’t decide whether to spin Loki around or throw his arms around him.  He did the later.  Burying the prince in a strong hug wild with relief.  The shock of the sudden attack seemed to have still affected him.  He could only stand staring at the jotuns.  Why was Cadeyrn so worried about him?  Why was he so surprised that Cadeyrn had saved him?  

He finally had to pat Cadeyrn on the back.  “I’m ok, Cadeyrn.  I think the cloak saved me from any major harm…”  He glanced around for the cloak but did not see it.  It must still be tangled around the monster’s claws.  

“Your cloak!”  Cadeyrn shifted all his weight to his good leg and worked his own cloak off.  “Put this on before you get too cold.”  There was no way for Loki to stop him.  The human just kept going and threw it around him.  He knew the look on his face; that of a parent trying to take care of a child.  

“But you’ll get cold…”  Byleistr said.  He had positioned himself so that his large frame acted as a breaker against the wind that was beginning to pick up.  Helblindi stood nearby as well, looking between the leopards and something off in the distance.  Misha was worriedly pacing around his mother.  She sat panting, blood from the beast on her paws and jaw.  “He’s right,”  Loki added, “and you shouldn’t be standing on that leg.”

Cadeyrn looked down, as if he was just remembering it.  “Oh.  Nah, I’ll be fine.”  He tried to draw their attention to the snow leopards.  “I don’t think we should continue riding them.  Aruna has been stressed.  I’m worried that it might trigger her labor early…”  The snow leopard butted her head against his outstretched hand.  She seemed to be recovering now.  But Loki could understand Cadeyrn’s concern for her.  

“And a storm is coming.  If we carry you, we might make it back to the palace in time before it strikes.”

Byleistr was already moving to pick them up.  Loki cast a worried look at Cadeyrn.  The human only gave a tiny, sheepish grin.  “I won’t be able to talk my son out of it.”  The cloak was wrapped around both of them so they would be warmly tucked inside.  Then, Byleistr swept them both up in one set of arms.  While there was some room for movement, the cloak was wrapped around them so only part of their faces peeked out.  

“Aruna while take Misha back to her den to rest…”  Cadeyrn offered, trying to break the sudden awkwardness of close quarters.

“That is good.”  Loki answered.  He could feel his body growing tired, both from the use of magic and the draining adrenaline.  Cadeyrn’s eyes had returned to normal.  Byleistr and Helblindi had already begun to run.  After a few moments Loki grew used to the swing of the jotun’s gait.  “Did… did you know that your magic is considered a catalyst?  A vessel?”  The surprised look told him no.  At least it would give them something to talk about.  “It might not feel like a lot to you or people who can sense it in rest.  But it leaps out in times of duress when one hasn’t been trained.”

“Ah…”  Cadeyrn said in understanding.  “That is not the first time that has happened…”

“Usually, even if the vessel never gains conscious control of it, it can be passed down the bloodline and allows descendants to become powerful magic users.”

The green eyes lit up at the suggestion.  “So there is a chance that Loptr inherited it and can use magic?”

Loki could only shrug.  “I cannot say.  Magic comes and affects everyone differently.  But there is a very good chance, and gives you something to look for in your search…”  If Cadeyrn could have hugged him, he would have.  Instead Loki could see the twinkles in his eyes and the goofy smile on his face.  He could not help a tiny smile of his own.  “So, since I have given you good news, perhaps I could request something of you?”

“Ah ha!  Using my own technique against me~”  Cadeyrn meant well.  His face was open and invited the prince to ask away.

“… how did you and Laufey…”

The human made an understanding noise.  He grew silent for a moment as he considered the question.  Was it safe to tell him?  Was he comfortable with it?  “That is a tale for a warm fire and a mug of tea.  If your curiosity can wait, I promise to tell you once we arrive back at the palace.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes me and my terrible fight scenes...
> 
> Ísabrotdýr is a word/name I created for the giant frost-dog-monster things we see in Thor (sent by Laufey after them) and Thor 2 (the creature that comes throught the portal and frolics about in the end credits) since it isn't named from what I could find. It is taken from Old Norse Ísabrot (ice-breaking) and Dýr (beast, animal).
> 
> Randomly, Laufey has 'tamed' three to his command to guard the palace. Which is now down to two since Thor killed the third.


	8. Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cadeyrn finally tells his story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told from Cadeyrn's point of view

We arrived back home only a few minutes after the storm started.  Held in Byleistr’s arms and tucked into the cloak Loki and I were safe from the elements.  I find myself unable to stop worrying over him.  Being from Asgard, always warm and golden as Laufey has told me, he cannot be used to the cold as I have grown.  He does not have the benefit of being mated to a native of the land or have their icy magic breathed over him.

Laufey met us at the door.  He did not care how he might appear to our outsider.  His red eyes locked on me when he saw that our son carried both of us.  He shuffled the boys off to bring Loki inside out of the snowy wind and swept me off to a more private room.  He immediately zeroed in on my injured ankle.  It was feeling much better now since I had not walked on it.  But he still gently pulled off the boot and head the swollen joint in his cool hand.  I couldn’t help the moan of relief that left me.  We were all home safe and sound.  

“Cadeyrn…”  Laufey spoke softly before kissing the ankle.  The ruby eyes looked up at me speaking worry and reprimand.  He never likes it when I am injured.  He never has.  

“Don’t worry.  It happened after the bandits… an Ísabrotdýr surprised us on the way home.  No.  Don’t fear.  I took care of it.”

The worry turned to a knowing grin.  “That’s my Fang.”  As he continued to hold me I told him all that had occurred.  Bandits, hoping to gain the throne, had indeed been behind the attack on Asgard.  They had been hiding out in the Black Spine and stumbled across the pathway there. They had indeed been banking on the knowledge that if a frost giant attacked the blame would immediately fall on Laufey as the king.  Loki had heard and witnessed everything, so even if he lied or tried to deny the truth he wouldn’t get away with it.  I don’t think he would lie to his father about such a thing but I couldn’t risk it.  The bandits slain we had checked on the surrounding area. Outside of the raids, news of which had led us to their location, the settlements were doing well.  The digging for soil was progressing rapidly and had indeed come across a large vein on Sea Sapphires.  The incident with the Ísabrotdýr was all that was left outside the news I would need to check on the snow leopards in the coming days.

Laufey gently butted his forehead against mine.  He or our sons could never do it full force.  Yet I was glad of the motion only practiced between jotuns who were extremely close.  But knowing their strength they did it with me.  “I am glad you are safely home.  I missed you.”  

“I missed you too~”  Reaching up I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him.  It was soft and sweet, two great loves missing one another.  Wanting simply to know the other is truly in their arms.  He eventually set me on the ground.  He knew I had things to do before coming to bed for the evening.  For a moment I lingered, my hand in his giant one.  I loved the feeling his thumb made as it rubbed over my knuckles.  

The pain subsiding from my ankle I made my way down to my cavern.  I knew my sons had brought Loki here.  While it was not a prison cell it was the place we had decided to keep him.  When the guards had brought him back, injured and prisoner, Laufey’s kneejerk reaction had been to throw him into the dungeon.  Gently dissuading him I pointed out that doing such a thing would get us into even greater trouble with Asgard.  If they had begun a war simply over Laufey trying to open contact between Jotunheim and my home world, what would they do if they knew their own son was thrown into a dark and icy place injured?  The entire thing was a mess.  Asgard’s princes suddenly invading us claiming we had attacked them, then our guards capturing one of them.  I had not seen the battle, protected deep in the heart of the palace with my sons by my side, but I had heard and felt it.  

I checked on Byleistr and then Helblindi on the way down.  My second son was making a meal for himself and his brother due to the hour.  I laid a hand on his strong arms and thanked him for carrying us.  He gave his craggily smile and nodded.  I wondered if Loki thought his extra set of arms odd.  I had when he was born.  I had feared something was wrong; that my human blood had not mixed with Laufey’s blood in our second child.  But Laufey had reassured me it was not very common, there were others like him.  Helblindi was talking quietly with his trusted guards and informing them on what had occurred with the bandits.  My eldest worked well with those around him.  He held their trust and loyalty without having to resort to fear and power.  He had learned these traits from his father well.  He would be an excellent king if he decided to take the throne after Laufey retired.  The group greeted me as I approached, and Helblindi lovingly allowed a kiss on his cheek.  He was a mighty ram among the jotuns, but it still touched me how my first baby always accept me as his parent.  

Continuing on my way I could not help but wonder how Loptr would be.  He would be a young man now.  Would he be the size of his brothers, simply starting out small, or would he be about my height?  The breath shook in my throat as I remembered the glittering red eyes shifting to green when I first held him in my arms.  Arriving at my rooms near the gardens I found Loki already settled.  He had changed back into the clothes I was lending him while he stayed here.  A fire roared in the fireplace and the moment I approached he held out a piping hot mug of tea.  “You don’t wait, do you?”

“Not when there’s a good story to be heard” Loki quickly replied.  I couldn’t help but smiling at him.  Despite the mask he presented I had begun picking the little gems of his true personality beneath.  There was a mischievous, fun loving young man in there.  I could not tell if he had created the mask out of hurt or something else.  He presented himself one way while hiding his true self underneath.  Did he not feel at home back in Asgard, perhaps?  I could understand, though.  Even I could not fathom why Odin had not come for him yet.  Dragging two blankets from the bed I draped one over his shoulders so the boy would remain warm.  

Snuggling under my own blanket I sat crossed legged by the fire before Loki.  For a few moments I watched the curl of the steam and the crackling of the fire.  Then I began my story:   “I am originally from a land called Cymru, also known as Wales, from a northern island in the realm called Midgard.  I was the second and middle son to my father, King Gwrtheyrn who ruled our people called the Britons.  My elder brother was Gwerthefyr, my younger brother was Pascent, and our mother was Sevira.  She was said to be the daughter of an emperor from a distant sea; we never met him.  I remember her so fair and beautiful… the boys in the castle used to tease me that I wasn’t hers since I was so raven haired compared to everyone else.  Perhaps that was true… Father was… wandering… but she never treated me as anything other than her son so I never had reason to believe the boys.”

“There were many battles, wars, when we were growing up.  I cannot tell you if this was the worst of times for the land or the usual troubles a king has to face.  My father was the one concerned with them and kept us in his holdings to safely grow.”  For a moment, staring into the fire, I saw the fond memories of my childhood with my brothers.  “When I was around ten years old was when I discovered that the feeling I always had under my skin had a greater form.  I don’t even remember what the boy said, just that his shoes were suddenly on fire and worms were coming out of his ears.”  Loki smiled at my description of the memory.

“I was a young man, old enough to know that there was trouble.  Word of invaders.  He moved to the north and the west of our lands seeking a place to build a fortress.  I remember weeks on end of men working to build the walls and the towers on the chosen kill, only to find the work collapsed in the morning.  I tried telling him the things I heard at night, the growling and arguing and trembles of the earth, yet no one listened.  He called all the wise and knowing men, yet none could explain it.  They even had the idea that they should sacrifice a boy born without a father!  But that was when the young wizard Myriddin Emrys came.”

“I think he might have been the boy born without a father, but I think he knew what was going on and came himself.  He told my father the king what was truly going on.  Beneath the hill was a pool that housed two dragons, one red and one white.  Every so often at night they would awaken and duel and the fortress would not stand if built above them.  There was a symbolism in the color of the dragons, but I heard it not, for in my youth I was prideful in telling my father that what I had heard was right.  Myriddin heard of what I said and took hold of me, digging his thumbs into the veins of my wrists.  He said only those with magic could sense and understand the dragons deep in the hill.  But soon he lost interest.  He said I was too old and trained in the way of a warrior to be of any use.”  

“There wasn’t much time to think on it.  My father the King soon completed his fortress on a different side of the hill away from the dragons.  And now we, his sons, were old enough to join him in battles when we were needed.”  I remember how battle-thirsty Pascent had been, and how eager Gwerthefyr was to punish those who fought against us.  “But then, came winter… that was when I met Laufey.  A rare snow had fallen.  My family and people were holed up in their homes, near the fire and away from the cold.  But I wanted to be outside so I bundle up on my horse and road through the lands.  It was so beautiful, all white under a sun in a pale blue sky.  I wandered into the hills and craigs, enjoying the quiet, when I saw something following me behind the rocks.  I demanded that they show themselves, and out stepped a giant.”

I could feel the blush coming up on my cheeks.  Decades had passed, but I still felt the same rush of emotions as I did that day.  “You know those times when you first lay eyes on something, and you just get a feeling?  That it intrigues you, it pulls you in?  You want it; you must have it.  I don’t know; I know many say that it doesn’t exist, I think I fell in love at that first sight.  He was strong and taller than any man I had ever seen.  I stared in awe at the colouring in him that I had never seen:  eyes like rubies and blue skin like icy.  He showed no fear or aggression to me, because I showed none to him.  He told me he was a Jotun, a Frost Giant, from a realm entirely different than mine.”  And laugh escaped me.  “Then he demanded how my realm had made him so short and why there had been no snow before he arrived.  We soon figured it out since my world had seasons while his did not, and the only permanent snow he sensed were at the two ends of my world.”

“Laufey was just as bright and inquisitive as I was.  He said that while exploring his realm, he had stumbled across an ancient pathway between our worlds.  Soon I found myself slipping away to meet him as often as I could.  I would show him all my favorite places, talking of many things or simply walking together.  Then he told me he had loved me since he first saw me, riding through the snow with my raven hair.  He had and still touches it often, since none in Jotunheim had the color… As you might expect what two people in love might do, alone…”  I saved Loki the details but still smiled fondly at them.  Exploring each others’ bodies so foreign to the other.  While I had seen men lay together among my father’s soldiers or had convinced a few to touch me, I had never gone all the way to receive or take from another man.  The excitement running through me as Laufey laid me bear in a hidden grove beneath an ash tree.  How afraid he had been that his icy touch or greater size would hurt me.  Then, after a few occasions, he had offered himself to me.  Discovering and marveling at his inbetween gender, slipping inside him both ways, worshipping the sapphire expanse of his skin.  “I knew then I wouldn’t give my heart to anyone else…  Then the battle came.”

“Laufey had been gone for several weeks.  Our own enemies had fallen upon us suddenly and without warning.  All of us had gone to battle, needed to keep our home and people safe.  Harsh.  Long.  And then all I remembered was the rushing black pain in my back and Laufey’s voice in my ears.  I knew I was dying, shot in the back by a coward, and wished I could see my love one more time…”  I closed my eyes and let out a sigh.  Though distant, I remembered the fear my younger self had faced at the thought.  “But then, I awoke.  And Laufey was before me.  I did not know where I was, for the battlefield had been replaced by a world of ice and snow.”

“Laufey told me in his absence he had returned to his own realm of Jotunheim and won the throne from tyrants seeking to destroy it.  He had returned to find me and witnessed the weapons meant to kill me.  Panicking, he had whisked me from the battlefield under a cover of snow to save my life.”  I ran a hand through my hair, remembering the anger I had felt.  “I know I should have felt gratitude, but I was so angry.  How could he take me away?  I needed to return!  What if everyone I knew and loved died without me?  But I was too weak and still healing so Laufey refused to let me go.  It took him several days of waiting out my anger to quietly tell me that he was pregnant, carrying our first child.  He had returned to offer me our child and to rule at his side as his quen.”

“I did not know what to think… I did not know what to choose…  Should my loyalty be to my father, to a throne I was unlikely to inherit and never wanted?  Should I stay with the person I loved, but taken without my permission and in a foreign land?  But Laufey had only wished to save me.  Close to death he had taken and laid me before the Casket of Ancient Winters, begging it to grant me life.  And a child… a child between Laufey and I…  I decided on Jotunheim, but I will admit it took a long time for my silent anger to fade.”

“I threw myself into learning about my new home and preparing to be both a quen and a father.  Of course there were those that resisted and resented that one of their rulers was an outsider, someone from a realm they barely knew anything about.”  A grin came over my face.  “Finally someone got up the nerve to challenge me to a duel, thinking  they could easily kill such a tiny opponent and claim Laufey for themselves.  They soon learned otherwise.  However, it got to be such a problem that Laufey finally declared that he was already carrying his heir and by Jotun tradition that, as the sire to his child, he could step in and fight to protect both of us.  Helblindi was born safely, into a kingdom that had accepted me.  He was a quiet but happy child.  Laufey and I learned together the joys and stumbles of raising a child.  I grew my hair and took my robes, finally able to feel comfortable in my own skin.  Byleistr was conceived and born.  I remember the panic I felt at his extra arms, but Laufey calmed me that while it was rare, it happened and was considered normal.”  

“For all my happiness in my mate, my children, and my kingdom, I still found myself thinking of the realm of my birth.  How was my family? My parents, my brothers?  Though Laufey had never ever forbidden me to return I simply hadn’t.  Until the day I decided I did.  I needed to know of my family’s fate, and if they were alive, they needed to know of mine.”  I squeezed my eyes shut.  I took deep breaths.  Nothing I did prevent the tears that slipped past.  “When I arrived back in Midgard, back in Cymru, I was not prepared for what I found waiting for me.  Lands I did not recognize.  Overgrown.  Cut down.  The tumbled down remnants, only stones, remaining of my father’s precious fortress.  And my family.  Dead for centuries.  Passed on as a distant history of a memory.  And then… myself.  My fathers and brothers were stories, legends written and passed down.  But I was a mere mention, the second son who had died in battle and was nothing more than ink on a page or runes on a stone.”

“Laufey was waiting for me at the pathway.  Even he hadn’t known the great difference in time that could happen between the realms.  Quietly, I let go of my anger at him.  Jotunheim was my home now and he and the children my family.   Especially at the sudden arrival of our third child.”  I threw another log on the fire.  It had burned down in the progress of my story.  But it was also a calculated pause of a storyteller.  Loki waited with the wide eyes of an eager listener.  “We did not even know Laufey was pregnant.  We feared he was miscarrying a barely formed child.  It was difficult, and long for something so small.  But when he finally arrived, Loptr was alive and strong and wanted us to clearly know this fact.  We wept in relief, holding our little one close.  He was merely the size of a human infant which explained why Laufey’s belly had not grown.  His eyes were bright and intelligent.  I knew he already took in everything around him.  I still swear his first little smile was one of mischief, pleased with himself for surprising us.  The first time I held him I knew then he carried my blood more strongly than his older brothers.  For the blue skin ran pale and the red eyes turned green.  We named him Loptr for the fiery spirit he carried within him.”

“We were so happy.  Helblindi and Byleistr delighted in their tiny brother.  They did everything to have him grace them with a laugh or smile.  I think they also liked the fact Loptr was small enough for me to carry in my arm while they carried me.”  I could tell the silly, happy smile was visible on my face.  It had truly been a happy time.  A time of new beginnings and hopes for the future.  The smile slowly disappeared as I spoke what came next.  “I do not know what your father, Odin, thought we were doing, or what he has told you.  But the truth is this:  we never invaded Midgard.  Why could I invade my own homeland?  Laufey and I had thought to open trade between the two realms, and to get Midgard comfortable enough with the visage and presence of Frost Giants for me to bring my sons there to visit.  For half of them also belongs to Midgard.  If Odin had just talked to us, instead of attacking…”

“Then the war came.  Growing closer and closer, Laufey grew more worried for the safety of me and the children.  Even though he was still weak from the birth, he led the army to defend our home.  But when we knew Asgard meant to march on the palace, we had to plan.  We had no foresight of what was to come.  We convinced ourselves that it would be foolish to hide myself and our sons in the same place, to be captured or slaughtered together.  So Helblindi took me, and Byleistr took newborn Loptr…  He thought that hiding in the Temple, our most sacred place, near the Casket of Ancient Winters, he and the baby would be safe…  Odin sent the army to the palace, while he himself attacked the Temple.  He nearly killed Byleistr, took the Casket, and every trace of Loptr vanished…”

By the end I could not talk.  I buried my face into bent knees and wept.  Decades had passed, and still Laufey and I felt the loss as if it still occurred.  We had lost much of our kingdom, our freedom, and our precious baby all on the same day.  Silence filled the room.  Eventually I spoke again, “So we were trapped on our world.  I do not know if Odin did it on purpose, or sought to take a powerful weapon.  But the taking of the Casket has condemned our world to a slow death.  The cold has grown deeper and the wind harsher.  The traditional places to grow food on the surface has all but vanished.  Only by taking alternative routes have we survived.  But so too has the taking of the Casket condemned me.”  I looked up to Loki, one of the Odin’s son, and kept him in my gaze so he understood.  “As far as my plans reach, I myself can never leave Jotunheim.  A mere human would have died a long time ago from the cold and from age, but using it to heal me tied me to some power in the Casket.  The cold does not bother me as much and I live a similar length to that of a jotun.  To leave Jotunheim, to search for my son or try to talk with Asgard, will kill me.  Laufey will not risk it, as dearly as we hold our child and our realm…”

My story done, my story passed on, I rose from the floor.  Loki opens his mouth.  He seeks to find something to say or to ask for more.  But he does not.  He can not.  I know I would not tell this story to anyone else.  But any other person would be our enemy and our captive, locked in the dungeon to keep ourselves safe.  Perhaps I hope to save my home through Loki, that he will return and convince Odin what he did was wrong.

Or perhaps I cannot stop myself from thinking the first thought that raced through my mind when Loki arrived.  That he looks just like what I imagine Loptr might if he were alive today…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so everything is clear (Welsh first, English second):
> 
> Cymru = Wales  
> King Gwrtheyrn = King Vortigern (married to Sevira, said to be daughter of Roman Emperor)  
> Gwerthefyr = Vortimer, first prince  
> Cadeyrn = Catigern, second prince  
> Pascent, third prince (unable to find Welsh version of name)  
> Myriddin Emrys= the wizard Merlin  
> the fortress of the dueling dragons = Dinas Emrys
> 
> As I revealed to one reviewer who caught the hint early, Cadeyrn background originates out of the pre-Arthur tale of King Vortigern and a young Merlin. Originally I had wanted the human lover to come from a simpler background but not from the Norse. Looking at old names, I fell in love with Cadeyrn, which means battle king in Welsh. The name site also said the name originates from a King of the Powys from ancient times. Looking at that origin led to that Cadeyrn's father was Vortigern, and recognized the Merlin tale. There is a lot known (legend, some potential history and archaeology) on Vortigern and his first/third sons. The sons particularly have their own sets of legends. But on Cadeyrn, the middle son, the only thing is said that he died in one battle. No stories. Like he's disappeared. 
> 
> So my writing brain fell in love with the perfect happenstance and used it for this story. Cadeyrn's 'death' in battle on Midgard was really Laufey saving him from death/bringing him to Jotunheim and having frost giant babies :D


	9. Loptr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long wait. Between the snow storms in the NE, work, holidays and my mom in surgery (she's fine now) updates got delayed. Opps?
> 
> This chapter is also filling for another prompt found here: http://norsekink.livejournal.com/11219.html?thread=24429779#t24429779  
> Short version: Loki walks into a Jotun mourning ceremony for Laufey's lost child (inspired by Tangled). Since something like that was going to be in the story anyway, thought I might as well fill another prompt.

Loki did not understand.

What Cadeyrn told him could not be absorbed in a single moment.  He thought.  And pondered on it.  Cadeyrn was from an old royal family in the histories of Midgard.  He had fallen in love with a stranger, an outsider.  But that stranger, Laufey, had all but kidnapped the human and held him here.  How could Cadeyrn still love him, even after he found out the distant deaths of his family.  Love.  Loki traced the letters on the wall next to the bed.  Could it really be so changing, so powerful?  No matter what he thought, no matter what he had been raised to believe, Cadeyrn loved a Frost Giant.  And the Jotun loved him deeply back.

What Loki also failed to understand was the deep sadness that came over Cadeyrn in the coming days.  Had the story given rise to old pains?  Cadeyrn slowly grew silent and withdrawn, nothing like the smiling and quick-worded man he had grown to like.  He would stare off into the distance, lost in his own mind, eyes swimming with tears.  When he asked after it, Cadeyrn only waved it off.  Finally Loki would take it no more and pinned the human with his words.  “Cadeyrn, you will tell me what is wrong.”

The man looked away, unable to take the fierce look in Loki’s eyes.  “The anniversary of Loptr’s disappearance is tomorrow…”  Everything drained out of a Loki.  Oh.  So that was it.  There was nothing he could do or say to take the pain from Cadeyrn.  Silently, he laid a hand gently on his arm.  He smiled softly, sadly, before slipping out of the room.

He could stay here and ignore it.  He should stay here and plot how to get home.  But he would not.  His friend was in pain and he would help.  But how?  When not much thought after than It might give him an idea, Loki cast his magic around himself to keep his form from sight.  He was sure to craft it so Cadeyrn would not sense it as he had done before.  So cloaked, Loki slipped from the cavern and followed the human up into the palace.

The walk was slow, almost listless.  The very energy around Cadeyrn had dimmed, and all saw it.  Many in the hallways, guards and others, took the time to say a gentle world or soft touch to the quen.  Cadeyrn would nod in return then continue on.  He eventually came to a part of the palace that Loki had not yet seen.  The human came to a closed door and stopped.  Hand on the stone, staring in front of him, the human was gathering his courage in his heart.  Finally, drawing in a shaky breath, he pushed the door and entered.  Following behind Loki could not help noticing that part of the giant door had halted construction for an inlaid door of his own size.

Loki would be shocked silent if he had not known before what might lay beyond.  A nursery.  A room created and crafted for a child.  Soft furs, toys, a cradle.  In the process of making it ready.  Never finished, never occupied.  Loki was shocked to see a hand carved wooden rocking chair in Cadeyrn’s size.  And next to it was the unfinished wood of a cradle being made for a baby of human size.  Carvings on the side half done and along the edges, set into the rockers but not secured.  Cadeyrn sat in the rocking chair, green eyes on the cradle.  His hands ran along the wood, finally reaching into the padding beneath.  A baby’s blanket, soft and green, trimmed in a decorative fashion.  The trimming was crude, but one ghosting of his fingers over it Loki knew that Cadeyrn had made it himself after the sudden birth of his youngest and smallest child.  Cadeyrn pressed the baby blanket to his mouth and screwed his eyes tight to keep from crying.  He rocked slowly in the chair, talking softly to himself and his child.  After a long while he set the blanket back into the cradle, soothing it into place like he was tucking in a child.

Drawing himself together Cadeyrn rose from the rocking chair and moved to a shelf along the wall.  It was carved at his height, in contrast to the shelf carved at a giant’s level above.  Smaller toys, a book or two, knick knacks.  Cadeyrn’s hands landed on a small hinged box and opened it slowly.  The long hands withdrew a beautiful piece of jewelry, glowing emeralds linked on finely wrought silver chains, smaller jewels dripping off the larger ones.  It might have been a headpiece or a necklace.  It was the finest thing Loki had seen during his stay on Jotunheim.  Tears fell on the green gems, flittering like melted snow.  Cadeyrn placed the jewels back into the box, closed it, and tucked it in his arm.  He seemed ready to leave the room, but then turned to something tucked in the corner.  He moved the covering faric and revealed part of what lay underneath.  Loki could not see with Cadeyrn blocking the way, but whatever it was the human took a few moments to touch it fondly before slipping out of the room.

He should have followed Cadeyrn.  But curiosity made him stay.  He should have kept check on his spell.  He should not have let the sight surprise him so much that he forgot to hide.  The cloth concealed a portrait, half finished.  Cadeyrn beaming brightly, a blue skinned infant sleeping in his arms.  A young Helblindi standing underneath, revealed by his raven hair.  Part of a giant leg on which Cadeyrn sat and a great hand on his back.

“Have you never heard the proverb about curiosity being a killer?”  The words rumbled above him.  Loki gasped and turned, magic at his fingertips, only now realizing the concealment spell had slipped away.  Laufey towered over him, arms crossed.  The red eyes ore down at him.  Calculating.  One hand moved, reaching out, but not to him.  It clutched the fabric over the portrait and pulled it off.  The image beneath was a portrait; a portrait of a family.  A sketch that was halted halfway into its transformation to a painting.  Laufey on the throne, Cadeyrn on one knee with the baby, Helblindi and Byleistr as children standing by his leg.  Cadeyrn and the baby, as well as most of the two older boys, were painted in careful detail.  They looked content.  They looked… happy.  “Have you never wondered why I allow you such freedom with my mate, my quen?  The son of my most dangerous enemy, the one who took everything.  I would have you in the dungeon when the guards brought you if not for Cadeyrn’s pleas to look after your injuries…  However, you were…unexpected.  You have become a friend to my Cadeyrn.  He does not have many close ones here.”

Laufey touched the portrait fondly, much the same way Cadeyrn had.  “I was still sketching this when Loptr arrived.  It was easy to add him in.  So tiny, fitting in Cadeyrn’s arms… but after then the war… I cannot bring myself to finish it.”

“You made this?”

“Don’t sound so shocked, tiny prince.  We were and are not simple barbaric monsters.”  Laufey carefully moved the portrait and revealed others stored behind it.  A tall painting of Cadeyrn.  He stood by a railing, emerald eyes gazing out into the distance.  He was dressed in a beautiful  silken robe the same color of his eyes, accenting his figure while the fabric trailed behind and down his sleeves.  His hair was done up in intricate braids, emeralds and white gems like snow woven into the raven waves.  He looked like a legendary king from an ancient tale.  “I used to keep him in such finer, because he was the ost precious of all my treasures in all of Jotunheim…  But after the war, as much as I hated it, I understood why I could not keep him so.  Cadeyrn wiled them away to keep our realm alive.  All his jewels and clothes traded for goods or for food, information, bribes so other realms would be willing to trade again.  Save for the necklace he took, which he saves to adorn Loptr in whatever form he returns to us.”

A proclamation of a prince if he were alive.  An adornment for his arrival in Hel.  Loki felt the eyes on him once more.  Laufey was studying him, trying to decide something.  Once more the painting was moved to reveal the one behind.  Many were sketches, all by Laufey’s hand.  Cadeyrn, eyes drawn in concentration, hair in a simple tail as he poured over a book.  The human leaning over the cradle to kiss Helblindi, their first child.  Playing with a toddler Byleistr who was nearly Cadeyrn’s size.  The last was the oldest by age or whatever it was drawn upon.  Cadeyrn was younger.  Seated on a horse, erect in his seat, hands loosely on the reins.  His hair was just long enough to caress his shoulders  His face was calm, but his intelligent eyes just turning and falling on the artist.  Surprise, interest, gentleness all in one moment.  The first time I saw him,” Laufey spoke of the drawing, “You’d probably never understand but right then I knew I would never love another.”

Cadeyrn never looked so familiar as in that drawing.  Where had he seen him before?

Laufey turned on him.  A great finger pushed into the center of his chest.  The clothes or Laufey kept his powers in check, but Loki could still feel the cold ice.  “You will be brought to the ceremony tomorrow.  Asgard for far too long has refused the reason of words.  The only way to speak to you anymore is to bear witness.  I will have Odin known of the pain and suffering he has caused my people and my household.”  Laufey drew back away from the foreign prince.  He was once more the icy king.  He nodded to the door, and his eldest son entered.  By the quickly hidden look on Helblindi’s face he had been caught eavesdropping.  “Bring Loki back to the rooms.”

Helblindi obeyed.  Little was said on the way back to the rooms.  One might have expected Helblindi to demand to know what he was doing there. Loki expected himself to snap at the jotun or defend himself.  Yet he did not.  His mind was consumed with questions and wonderings.  Something was bothering him, and for once he could not pinpoint it.  Cadeyrn did not return that evening, so the prince went to bed knowing he would see him at the ceremony tomorrow.

~*~*~

Sleep did not bring him any answers.  In fact, it only raised more.  Since his attempts at sneaking had not gone as planned Loki had to find a new way to uncover the answers.  Were the jotuns truly like this, or in the very least Laufey and his sons?  Or was it a carefully crafted play for sympathy laid out by Cadeyrn’s clever mind?  Taking a bowl and drawing clear water from the stream, Loki set it before him.  When the surface was stilled he cast a spell over it to turn it into a scrying mirror.  He carefully directed it to witness Cadeyrn and the space around him.

The human sat with his back to a fire, setting his recently washed hair to dry.  His chest bar and the lines painted on once more.  Only his legs were clad in a loose pair of silver white pants.  His bare feet were one atop the other and his eyes were cast down on the hands on his lap.  “Love…”someone rumbled softly out of sight.  Cadeyrn looked up, rose, and walked to them.  Laufey was kneeling n the floor of what must be their bedroom.  Cadeyrn held out his arms and the frost giant carefully pulled a figure-hugging robe of the same material as the trousers.  The long sleeves ended at a point near his knuckles, the ends flaring out past his hips halfway down his shins.  It was Laufey who took the time to fasten the delicate facets down the front.  Once dressed, Laufey turned the human to slowly brush the river of black hair.  Loki first thought it a fancy shared by the king and his sons, since long hair or hair in general wasn’t common from what he had seen.  But it was more he realized.  It was an act of bonding, to touch and be touched.  To take such time and effort in the care of another.

Laufey allowed the last strand to slip through his fingers.  As it settled, Cadeyrn turned and bright his gaze to the jotun’s.  Laufey raised his hands and set a delicate crown around the human’s brow.  White and silver, interlaced like the frost crystals of a snowflake.  Then, finally, the jewelry he had taken from Loptr’s room and set over his shoulders as a necklace.  A shuddering breath rent the air and Cadeyrn forced his eyes shut.  They opened as Laufey cupped his face.  A handful of tears fell unstopped down his cheeks and froze on the blue digits.  “I miss him so much…”

“I know…” Laufey’s reply was the softest rustle of air.  He looked said for a moment before burying it deep beneath his cold demeanor.  He leaned forward and kissed Cadeyrn where the crown met his brow.  Frost spread over the black hair and down its cascade like a veil, more delicate and beautiful than any jewel.

Both of Cadeyrn’s hands caught one of Laufey’s.  Holding strong to it, he took a steadying breath.  Opening his eyes he gave what tiny smile he could.  “Thank you, Laufey.”  The words were few, but vast and mighty.  The frost giant closed his eyes with a sad expression before that too was locked away.

~*~*~

Loki was soon summoned. Byleistr waited for him at the door.  Both sets of arms were carrying flowers and greenery.  It was the same for Helblindi, Cadeyrn, and a small group of guards that accompanied them.  It seemed like every flower and green leaf had been cut from Loptr’s garden.  No words were spoken in the procession.  It grew longer as it snaked its way from the palace towards the river the human had once pointed out.  The hidden roadway was limed with frost giants.  Old.  Young.  Male.  Female.  They all silently watched the procession pass and then joined behind.

All up and down the river all of Jotunheim seemed to be present.  The procession ended at a bend where the river flowed slowly.  A small dais had been formed out of the snow and upon it was Laufey.  He stood unblinking, eyes on his mate and sons.  Loki ended up at the foot of the dais with a guard.  A place to see and hear all that went on.  Cadeyrn knelt by the water and began to arrange the flowers into some type of float.  His sons flanked him, spreading thin tendrils of ice to keep it in place.  The gathered people watched in respectful silence.  Loki could see that many close to the water cradled something in their hands.

Cadeyrn finally stood, a single red rose remaining in his hands.  Helblindi and Byleistr also held one.  Laufey stepped forward to his quen’s side, his eyes commanding all to listen.  “I know,” Cadeyrn began, “I know there is still anger among us.  At a cruel outsider king who did not know us.  At the theft of the Casket locking us into our world to slowly wither.  But we have not died.  We live, and he love.  Wee try to move forward.  Perhaps it is not much, but Laufey and I have done all within our powers to return Jotunheim to life, not simply survival.”  Cadeyrn’s hand rose and touched the necklace.  “We have lost as well.  On that day our newborn son, Loptr, was taken from us and his brothers.  We now we do not know if Loptr is dead or alive.” Cadeyrn flinched, then continued, “But we keep hope.  Hope that Loptr is alive and will one day return to us.  Just as I know one such day will come that our Jotunheim will be alive once more.”

The gathered made a single noise in unison.  One that Loki did not understand.  The quen and king both knelt at the flowers.  Cadeyrn setting the rose and Laufey creating a ball of pure blue-white ice, light shining within.  Their sons did the same, touches lingering, then they all stood in unison.  It seemed to be a signal for the flowers were released.  The current quickly picked up the barge and brought it to the water.  Then, Cadeyrn opened his mouth and began to sing.

A single voice rising in the silence.  Soft, then building.  It was with and yet without words.  A song.  A melody.  Laufey’s voice joined in and then their sons.  Soon the people around them and everyone gathered raised their voices in the song.  It ebbed and it flowed.  It was like the sound of cool, deep water.  It was the slow ache of the ice as it moved and groaned.  All along the river, jotuns knelt to add what they could to the tiny procession.  Many offered a single white flower, large and beautiful.  Others added little boats of ice lit from within.  It continued, on and on, the lowers and light for Loptr leading the way.

The Allspeak did not translate the song, but Loki didn’t need it.  He could feel it.  He could not hide the tears on his cheeks, an answer to those silently spilling from the human.  In the song he could feel the pain of a parent, of a brother, losing a child.  The love from all that was woven there.  So to o he wept at the honor the people showed.  They might not agree, they probably had never even seen the child, yet they did this for him.  They helped the family mourn and also helped them remember.

A brief thought fluttered through Loki’s mind:  did any on Asgard remember today was his birthday?  In that, he felt connected to the lost child.  Born on the day he vanished…

He would not recall how the ceremony was dispersed.  The next he knew he was back at the palace.  The ceremony… no, the lights and the flowers.  They tickled his memory.  Emerald eyes closed as he searched his mind… Yes!  He remembered!  As a young boy…. Looking out the windows on the water near the palace.  The lights… the flotilla of flowers…. Arriving on his birthday.  How excited he had been, waiting each year to see it, thinking it a gift from Mother.  One year he had run down to see, wondering where it came from and where it went.  That was the first time he had found an ancient pathway…. Too frightened of jotun monster stories to take more than a few steps into a portal to Jotunheim.  One year he had mentioned the lights and floating flowers, pointing them out to Father.  How angry Odin had grown.  He had always wondered why.  Then, they had stopped appearing… and then slowly forgotten.

They had been from Jotunheim?

~*~*~  

Laufey struggled to swallow his sobs as he wept into his mate’s lap.  Out of the ceremony he always fought to keep his face blank.  Here, in the safety of their room, he could weep.  The surprise child, the sweetest blessing, the tiniest and yet powerful warrior… Loptr.  How he had failed the child and his mate and other sons.  Why did he not protect him?  He would never see that sweet face again.  See Cadeyrn smile as he held a child his size.  Listen to the tiny breathes as he nursed.

Above him, Cadeyrn silently supported him.  A hand stroked his cheek as he wept.  His mate wept for him many times to save face in their society, where some would see it as weakness.  But here, alone, with the privacy of his mate, Laufey could.  He could feel Cadeyrn trembling, his warm body body leaning against his head.  Cadeyrn coughed once, twice, then a horrible racking like he couldn’t breathe.  Laufey raised his head; rarely the human would work himself sick with weeping.  But this was not it.  Cadeyrn’s face was pale but his cheeks were flushed.  He sweated.  He barely had enough time to scramble away before he threw up violently over the side of the bed.  Laufey supported the shaking frame, holding his hair away until there was no more.  Fear gripped his heart as Cadeyrn collapsed back into his hand, convulsing and eyes rolling to the back of his head.

Loki jerked in his seat as a bellow shook the very ice of the palace.  The jotuns nearby jerked to attention, weapons in hand and eyes searching.  A thudding swept down the hall and Byleistr skidded into the room.  His ruby eyes were wide and fearful. And they were locked on Loki.  The jotuns demanded to know what was going on, but the prince shook his head.  He swept Loki from his seat and pounded back the way he came.  “Byleistr!”  Loki shouted after several yells did not end in his freedom.  “What are you doing!?  Put me down!”

“Father-King summoned you.  It’s... it’s Papa… he’s… There was fear in Byleistr’s voice.  It made the demands shrink in Loki’s throat.  He had never seen the jotun anything other than calm or playful.  He said no more as he burst into a room.  Loki soon recognized as belonging to Cadeyrn and Laufey.  Said jotun was rapidly pacing, talking furiously and glancing towards the bed.  

At their entrance Laufey turned in a flash.  The blazing eyes narrowed and his lips curled over his teeth.  “You!”  He screamed, “you did this!”  He lunged towards the doorway and Loki.  It was oly Helblindi’s quick movements and struggle to keep hold that protected him.  Yet even Loki, with all his experiences in battle and facing many different foes, would have shrunk back if he could.  “It’s your fault!  Some curse, some trick!  If he dies I’ll have you and all of Asgard on the Spires!”

“Father!”  Helblindi grunted with the effort to keep him back.  “Stop.  You called him here.  Every moment of blame allows Papa to grow more ill.”  Laufey seemed to regain control at his eldest’s words.  He shrugged him off and jabbed a finger at the bed.  “Cadeyrn.  He has become ill.  He is never sick.”  It must be serious for Laufey to call him, an outsider.  He must have never seen it before.  But the suddenness of the sickness was alarming.  The human had shown no signs only shortly before.

Loki approached the giant bed.  Small stairs, crafted for Cadeyrn, were carved into the side of the bed that led upwards.  T the top he found Cadeyrn tucked into the furs and blankets, sweating and shaking, pale except where he was flushed with fever.  He groaned and seemed to struggle to breathe.  

“Cadeyrn?”  Loki asked in shock.  He knelt on the stone side of the bed and laid his palm over his friend’s forehead.  He ignored Laufey’s protective growl.  It was clammy.  Eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.  He could smell a hint of bile and knew he had already thrown up.  Cadeyrn was ill.  Seriously ill.  How?  And so quickly?

“You have no healers?”

“Yes, but our methods work poorly on humans.  Cadeyrn knows how to treat himself.  I’ve never seen this…”

Sudden.  Unseen.  No prior symptoms.  It all clicked.  His hands threw back the blankets and quickly worked over the human’s body.  He felt Laufey suddenly at his back,, ready to strike, but he snapped first.  “You want me to help?  Then you’ll have to trust me!  I don’t think he’s sick.  I think he’s been poisoned.”

He had to save Cadeyrn.

He would not let Cadeyrn die!

He could have used it.  He could have lorded it over his enemies.  He could have threatened Cadeyrn’s very life, that he would let him die if the frost giants didn’t allow him to return home.  It didn’t even cross into his consciousness.  He had to save him.  He had to protect the human.  

Laufey froze in his place.  His faced paled.  The possibility must not have crossed the jotun king’s mind.  “The sudden violent sickness.  His magic is racing, trying to protect him.  Vomiting might have saved his life for not, but the poison might still be in him.  In his speech, I saw him flinch…”  Laufey understood as Loki mentioned it.  He had thought it emotional but what if it had been the attack?  “Here!”  A tiny tear in Cadeyrn’s robe, then the trousers beneath.  Rolling the pant leg up revealed the culprit.

There was no weapon, no dart or needle.  But the wound revealed it.  A puncture.  A dark bruising ring that was rapidly spreading and turning black.  Something oozed out of the wound, tinted an odd color.  Loki rubbed it between his fingers and instantly recognized the momentary smell.  “Yesian...”  The poison was derived from the deadly barbs of the Yesian fish, found under the ice of Jotunheim.  It was frozen into a needle shape and shot into the target, where any remaining portion of the weapon would melt away.  It caused violent sickness and pain in the body, before seizing the muscles and shutting down the organs.  It was a favored if hard to obtain poison due to the initial numbing effect before symptoms set in.  

Laufey turned to Helblindi.  The words were tight and cold.  “Search all those that were in attendance.  Talk to the guards.  It was someone on an angle to hit his leg.  This was an attempt on his life.  They will pay.”  Helblindi needed no more instruction.  With a final look at his sire he sped to do his duty.  Laufey turned back, ready to help.  Loki waved him closer to the bed while he addressed Byleistr.  “Quickly, run down to the garden.  Athelas.  I need as much of it as you can safely harvest.  Boiling water and bandages for a poultice.  Do you know what Athelas looks like?”  Byleistr nodded.  Cadeyrn had wisely taught his sons everything in the garden and how to recognize them.  The flowering herb had high healing properties when people remembered that it has an herb and not a weed.  While it would not instantly cure Cadeyrn it would greatly increase his chances.  

Loki looked to Laufey now.  “I need to sit him up and keep that leg lower than the rest of his body.  I might even have to create a tie to restrict the blood flow if it is spreading too quickly.  Most of all, keep near him.  Touch him and talk to him.  This will keep him calm while I work on him.”  The jotun nodded.  If Loki spoke it he would do it.  He would do anything to ensure that his mate would live.  

Loki did not know how long he struggled to save Cadeyrn’s life.  Byleistr returned with a good store of Athelas and a great cast iron pot filled with water.  Laufey set it to keep warm over the fire after Loki drew some of the water into a bowl.  He set the plant to soak in it, so the plant would begin to break down and release its effects.  He soaked some of the bandages in the healing tea, wrapped a wad of Athelas inside, and set it against the poison site.  Laufey was always nearby, a cool thumb stroking Cadeyrn’s forehead and keeping the fever down.  The Asgardian prince bathed the human’s skin in the tea and dribbled it between his lips.  Cadeyrn slipped in and out of consciousness.  There were times when the poison overtook his body, convulsing and drawing tortured screams from his throat, or dry heaving what little he had in his stomach.  And yet others his was quiet save for his quiet breaths, eyes flickering in whatever fevered dream he saw.  

Despite the icy structure of the room, Loki had shed his overshirt at one point and wore just his sleeveless undertunic.  The stress.  The rise and fall of hope and fear.  He felt like he had fought a hundred battles.  What he wouldn’t give for his mother to be here.  She could heal Cadeyrn in a heartbeat.  Loki did all he could.  The Athelas did its work both inside and out of the body.  He had to replace the poultice on his leg twice before all the poison was drawn out.  Once the stomach had settled after the dry heaving he dripped in more of the tea.

Then, blessedly, Cadeyrn grew calm.  It was only for a few moments at a time, but the glazed emerald eyes opened to look on them.  A hand gently rising to touch one of them before falling back to the blankets.  “Bring him something warm and simple to drink to give him strength.  Milk if you have it…”  Loki tiredly asked of Laufey.  The king nodded before slipping from the room.  A jug and cup in their size soon appeared next to him.  Laufey withdrew to talk to his eldest son who had returned.  

Cadeyrn was awake enough that with Loki’s help he drank half a glass.  Loki ran a hand through his own dark hair while releasing a long, slow breath.  How long had he been holding it?  How long had he been here?  It was hard to tell time in this windowless  room.  “L-Lau…?”  Cadeyrn croaked.  “Lo…?”

“He’s near.”  Loki quietly reassured him.  “He’s talking with Heblindi.  You were poisoned at the remembrance ceremony.  Do you remember?”  Cadeyrn blinked slowly.  He didn’t.  He tried to move and hissed at the pain in his leg.  Once he settled he gave his nurse a tiny smile.  Heh.  Still Cadeyrn even at the brink of death.  

Loki found himself thirsty.  And that was how he found himself drinking the milk that Laufey had brought.  It shouldn’t have been anything worth noting.  He was in need of drink after the ordeal.  It was the only thing nearby.  There was more in the jug.  But that was not it.  It was the effect the drink immediately had on its body at the first taste.  Electricity raced through him.  Blood thudded in his veins.  Emotions welled up in his throat.  His perfectly structured thoughts of the moment before fell to pieces and left him sobbing.  

“Loki…?”  Cadeyrn asked, touching the prince on the knee.  The prince looked up, sorrow etched across his face.  He was not a grown man but a lost little boy.  “What is wrong?  Did I frighten you?”  Loki shook his head, unable to speak.  The human lifted an arm and Loki took the motion, curling close so he could rest his head on Cadeyrn’s chest.  What was wrong with him?  What was this sudden sickness for home and family he felt.  “Oh Loki…”  The slim hand weakly settled and began stroking the short dark strands.  “I’m sorry…  This… this has just all been the worst possibilities, hasn’t it?”

Laufey found himself watching the strange unfolding.  His eyes slide over the weeping prince, to the empty cup in his hand and the bead of white milk still on his lip.  Cadeyrn continued to talk in a soft tone.  “We’ve been very cruel…  Here we are speaking of… how someone stole our child away… while we have kept you from your mother.  By keeping you prisoner, we… are no better.  I think… we need to let you go home.  No treaties, no parley.  Just return home.  What do you think?”

He felt Loki nod his head against his chest, then shake it.  The young prince still wept quietly despite reassurances.  In his weakened state Cadeyrn did the only thing he knew to help a frightened child.  He began to hum.  Across the room, three jotuns raised their heads.  Each knew the song.  Laufey, for his mate created it.  Helblindi and Byleistr, for it was created for them.  Cadeyrn had said that his mother had done the same for him and his siblings.  She sang them a song in the womb and all throughout their childhood.  It began the same but ended differently for each child.  Cadeyrn had sang it against his belly when Laufey was thick with child.  He had hummed it over the babies as they slept.  Even little Loptr had his lullaby in the few days they had been gifted with them.  Laufey held his breath.  Cadeyrn was most likely not even aware of what he did.  Which song did he choose?  And how would Loki react to it?

Then, it happened.  Cadeyrn hummed the change in the song.  Where the lullaby turned into Loptr’s song.  The effect was instant.  Against him Loki stilled.  His body and heart listened and grew calm.  By the end of the song he was curled against the human in a peaceful sleep.  Cadeyrn, drained and unaware, soon followed.  Laufey felt his eldest sons press on either side of him.  “What does it mean, Father?”

“I do not know…”  Laufey answered honestly.  They asked the same question he felt after witnessing such a thing:  why did Loki calm instantly at the song made and sung only to Loptr?  But even Helblindi and Byleistr did not even know the depths of puzzlement that Laufey’s mind took.  The jotun king had provided milk from his own breast to strengthen his mate.  There was nothing else.  Loki, by accident, had drunk it, and had an almost instantaneous emotional reaction to it.  Like a jotun newborn taken away from their milk before they were properly weaned…  “Your sire is safe.  The poison will not kill him.  For now, we are all in Loki’s debt.  I will return him to his rooms to rest.”

Laufey reached down.  Even though two were witnesses, if it were not so, he would claim it was an accident.  As he picked up the tiny frame, his fingers touched the pale skin.  It was then Laufey knew.  Instead of dark, blackened skin freezing where his icy powers touched it, the pale skin blossomed blue.  The longer the touch lingered the more the color spread.  Up and down his bare arms.  Beneath his clothes and up over his face.  Soon the slumbering sorcerer, the foreign prince of an enemy realm, had transformed where he lay cradled in Laufey’s arms.  No longer an Asgardian.  No.  He was a jotun, a frost giant.  A runt of their blood.  Laufey felt his heart slowly rise into his throat until it would not be contained any longer.  He gasped out a sob.  To feel and reassure his mind what his eyes saw he traced a finger over the lines rising or carved into the sapphire skin.  He knew those lines:  they were the lines in his own skin, in the skin of his sons Helblindi and Byleistr, on the soft limbs of his newborn baby son.  

He had found their missing son.

“You have finally come home, Loptr…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Athelas, aka Kingsfoil, is taken from the Lord of the Rings universe. Kinda needed an all-healing herb for a made up poison. (And since many aspects of Lord of the Rings were taken/modeled after Norse Mythology by Tolkien, kinda comes full circle when you take and use it for the Thor univerise :P And since LotR was my very first fantasy genre I thought I'd give it a nod)


	10. Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if this pops up anywhere weird. I swear it posted but apparently got eaten by the internet.
> 
> EDIT 2/11/14
> 
> Yeah, in writing the next chapter I realized there were a couple spelling and grammar mistakes so most have been fixed. Opps?

Laufey sighed quietly as he watched Loki sleep.  Tucked into the blankets and furs he looked so small.  He so resembled Cadeyrn as a young man when they had first met.  If someone had told him it would happen like this… If he had not seen it with his own eyes?  He would have laughed in their face and struck them for suggesting such a thing.  

The king thought back on all that had happened.  Now that they had learned it, it seemed so foolish that they had not thought of it before.  There had been no signs that Loptr had been killed.  Someone would have to be worse than a monster to bring harm to an innocent newborn.  Byleistr had set him near the Casket to protect him before going out of the room to battle Odin.  Both the child and the Casket were taken, and could have only been taken by Odin.  Whatever reason Odin had for taking him Laufey would not put it past him to do it.  He knew Odin was cruel enough.

Laufey had questioned himself the moment Loki had arrived in Jotunheim.  He had mistaken him for a captured Cadeyrn, and then learned he was the son of his most hated enemy.  In his mind Loki had become the enemy, an extension of Odin himself.  When the guards had brought his unconscious form a split second thought had been to kill him.  Takes Odin’s son just as the Asgardian’s foolish war had taken his son.  Then he had thought to throw him in the dungeon.  Let him freeze and rot there out of Odin’s reach to save him.  He could use the princes’ foolish attack as a way to save his home.  Bargain for the return of the Casket and make Odin answer for everything he had done.  

It was anger born out of deep pain.

Laufey had never expected to have children of his own.  He had not been certain growing up whether he had the ability to sire, carry, both, or neither.  There had been no one in Jotunheim that had caught his interest.  Sure, there were some he experimented with when he came of age.  None he would even think of courting to be his mate.  He trained his body like the others but also sought out opportunities to train his mind.  He want to see, he wanted to explore.  He sketched the things he discovered and decorated the walls of his room with them.  It was that same curiosity that led him to stumble on an ancient portal of the Great Tree into another realm.

He had never seen a place without snow.  It was warm.  At least, when it wasn’t raining or hovering fog from the sky.  Green rolling hills and seas of tree after tree.  He could sense the cold of his youth in the distant reaches of the world, but not immediately before him.  This world must have that phenomenon called ‘seasons’ for it did begin to snow around him.  The realm even had made him appear smaller than his true jotun height!

Then… then he had seen Cadeyrn.  Riding on his steed with the seat of a warrior, but with the noble bearing and bright eyes of an intelligent man.  The snow had crowned his black hair like the glittering stars of a midwinter sky.  That one sight of him and Laufey knew he had found his mate.  The more time they spent together the more Laufey knew that the words spoken that some people were made for each other were true.  Sure, there were differences, not even to mention their height and species, but they molded well together.  Love at first sight had turned into a deep and binding friendship that would carry them throughout their lives.  It had been months before they had lain together and then times before Cadeyrn had mounted him.

Laufey had sensed Helblindi quickening in his belly.

He had felt it on a visit home to Jotunheim.  He had been summoned by friends and relatives concerned for the realm.  The queen was slowly losing her mind.  She was wild and warmongering.  She abused and threatened her own people, while worsening the delicate ties Jotunheim had with the other realms.  Perhaps he had been young and simpleminded, but Laufey had decided he would not allow his home to suffer.  He would not allow his child to be brought up a world shadowed in danger and war.  So he had challenged the queen and bested her and her own in battles of strength.

He had not expected to be chosen as King, Ruler of Jotunheim, afterwards.  Could he rule a realm?  Could he return his home to the time before the Mad Queen’s rule?  Laufey knew one thing.  If he were to do this, there was no one else he wanted more at his side as Cadeyrn.  But when he returned to Midgard to ask it of Cadeyrn, he had walked into the middle of a battle.  Humans fighting amongst each other.  Bodies of the dead littering the ground.  Laufey searched amongst them and did not find his love.  No.  His Cadeyrn was locked in the battle trying to protect his people and family.  Laufey still remembered the first the sound of the first arrow piercing into Cadeyrn’s back, the sound of his body falling off his horse.  Another piercing him, before an archer stood over him and shot him a third time for overkill.  He never saw the jotun coming and never felt the deathblow that snapped his neck.  Laufey had scooped up his mate’s lifeless body and whisked him away.

The healers had not been able to do anything for Cadeyrn.  Most had never even seen a human much less tried to heal one.  In desperation he had taken Cadeyrn to the Temple and laid him before the Casket.  He had begged their ancient treasure to spare Cadeyrn, to heal him and keep him from death.  It blessedly did.  It had granted him life.  And the only reminders were the scars on his back.

Laufey had solidified his rule with Cadeyrn at his side.  It had taken the people time to adjust, especially to a quen that was both a human and an outsider.  But most had soon recognized that it was the actions that made Cadeyrn.  He cared deeply for his new home and the people who lived there.  Soon there were only pockets of resistance, those who wanted power for themselves or wanted purity on the throne.  Helblindi had been born despite all the chaos.  A healthy, happy baby.  The two of them had learned together the joys and the mistakes of parenthood.  Helblindi seemed to instinctively recognize his size over his sire and had never hurt him even as a mistake.  Cadeyrn did everything for the growing boy despite soon being smaller than him.  

Byleistr had been more planned.  They wished to have more children and to provide a sibling for Helblindi.  Laufey remembered the surprise in Cadeyrn’s eyes when he had first held the child.  Not fear, but uncertainty.  Apparently there were no humans born with an extra set of fully functioning arms.  He did not think him a monster, however, but strode to be an even better father to both boys.  Laufey taught them what he knew of battle and how to use their eyes for detail, how to sculpt the world around them to match the vision in their head.  Cadeyrn told them stories, gathered both of Midgard and Jotunheim.  He learned their world with them, watching over them as they grew and found friends.

Loptr had been an utter surprise.  

There had been no sign of Laufey’s pregnancy.  No growing in his belly, no noticeable kicks of life.  The only sign was sudden bursts of pain and the liquids trickling out between his legs.  It was not until Cadeyrn had rushed in the healers that the pregnancy was revealed.  And even then they had been told that it was no full term.  Just starting, and now ending in a miscarriage.  Cadeyrn had held his hand through the pain, through the complications that dragged the birth on and on.  Laufey had been out of his mind with pain and grief.  They were losing a child they had never even known.  Suddenly, Loptr had arrived.  Screaming his breaths and letting them know he had arrived.  He had been so small, so tiny, wrapped in a blanket and tucked in Cadeyrn’s arms.  The quen had to reassure all of them, even Laufey, that the child was fine.  Human babies were always born about this size and why the pregnancy had not been noticed.  The healers could not explain what had caused the complications and gently delivered the news that they were unlikely to be able to have another child.  

That made Loptr all the more precious.  Laufey laid in bed recovering and watched Cadeyrn rock their youngest child in the rocking chair he had carved.  He had loved to tuck Helblindi and Byleistr in the crook of his own arms when they were small enough.  He had never thought that Cadeyrn would enjoy that as well.  The first two had been too big.  But now… here was a child his size, fitting in his arms, magic changing his sapphire skin to resemble his human father.  A fighter, and a skin-changer.  He had apologized to the human that their other children had not started out this small.  Cadeyrn had smiled softly and told him that size mattered not. Every baby was a unique gift.  Would it bother Laufey and the other frost giants that one of their own would be so small and able to change his skin?  Laufey had laughed and snuggled both of them to his chest.

Those few precious days with the baby.  Then the war.  Then the disappearance.  So much pain coming in so many directions.  His people only saw his stance against Asgard and keeping their realm alive.  Only his mate and surviving sons saw the loss of the child.  It was one thing to make the decision to not have any more children.  It was another situation entirely to have it taken away from you.  Loptr was the last child he would ever have, ever be able to gift to Cadeyrn and the world.  He knew he called all his family his precious jewels, but Loptr was the centerpiece.  

Loki sighed in his sleep and burrowed deeper into the furs.  How many times had he almost given up hope?  How many times had he wished he could just cut his heart from his chest?  All the places they had looked, all the people Cadeyrn had used all his cunning to get to, all the things they had done…  All this time, Loptr had been held captive under the hand of the adversary.  He reached out and stroked a finger over the boy’s cheek.  He watched him transform into the small jotun he had always imagined Loptr to grow into, then back to the near image of Cadeyrn as a young man.  

~*~*~

It was late morning when Byleistr came to tell him that Cadeyrn was awake and well enough to talk.  Laufey smiled softly at the sight of his mate, most of the tension going out of him.  The human’s color was much better at its normal pale rather than the pale of death.  He sat up in bed with his hands wrapped around a warm mug of tea.  At his approach Cadeyrn looked up and greeted him with that brilliant smile.  It brightened his eyes, but also revealed the lingering pain and lethargy.  Cadeyrn reached for his hand as he knelt next to the bed and Laufey gave it to him.

Laufey leaned his head against his mate’s and breathed in his scent.  “How are you feeling?”

“Better, but tired.”  Cadeyrn gave a little laugh.  “I’m sure to be well and back in your hair soon.”

“I’ll be fine, since I obviously have no hair for you to get into.”  Laufey teased right back.  The pout was so cute, and so Cadeyrn, he could not help but to kiss it.  The knowledge that his beloved was recovering lifted a great weight from his shoulders.  But there was still a great weight left behind.

And Cadeyrn saw it.  “What is it, Laufey?”

Laufey drew in a breath.  He knew his mate deserved to know.  What he could not predict was how his mate would react.  Relief, joy, happy sadness to be sure.  But where would the news take that brilliant and conniving mind?  He stroked the hand as he thought, and knew he could not keep it.  “Cadeyrn.  Loki is our son.”  

The king watched the green eyes grow wide.  The mouth so quick at summoning words opened and shut in silence.  Cadeyrn set the mug down so it would not spill from his suddenly shaking hands.  “Laufey, please…  I do not think I can take—“

“No.  I speak the truth.”  Laufey grasped his hands before he could speak further.  He saw Cadeyrn withdrawing into himself, speaking to keep himself from the pain.  “Can you recall when Loki was at your bedside, taking care of you?  The reason he wept was that he drank the milk I had drawn from myself to strengthen you, like a newborn taken from their milk.  You unconsciously sought to comfort him and sang him the song you made for Loptr.  He calmed instantly, Cadeyrn.  He went to sleep.  And when I went to move him, I touched his bare skin.  He changed.  He is not Aesir, not of Asgardian, but of Jotunheim.  I saw the lines in his skin.  The lines of my family.”

Tears began to swim in the emerald eyes.  “I… I thought it was just a foolish whim of mine when I fought to take care of him.  A game of pretend, that this was Loptr as an adult, that perhaps if I showed kindness somewhere the same was being done for our son if he lived…”

Laufey nodded.  “Think on it, Cadeyrn.  It makes sense.  For so long we have searched, but been led with false hopes, that we did not see the signs in front of us.  When they arrived to accuse us, for a split moment I thought Loki was you captured.  It was then the milk began to flow more strongly within me.  You took care of him as a person, and not as a captive prisoner.  The ease of your friendship with him and his companionship with you.  How I could permit an enemy to have such freedom with my mate, my sons, and in my household.  Unconsciously our instincts were letting us know that Loki was our son returned to us.”  

Cadeyrn closed his eyes.  He forced himself to draw steadying breathes.  In and out.  “Loptr is Loki… But… for him to be prince of Asgard means that he has been in the house of Odin all this time.  Odin was the one who took him that day?  But why?  And for what purpose?  He did not make him king, or tell him of his heritage.  From what Loki told me his life in Asgard has not been easy.  Odin even allowed Brokkr to—“

Cadeyrn was shocked into silence.  It was if all the breath had been sucked out of him.  He remembered.  He heard the lingering fear and pain in Loki’s voice as he recalled the event.  Laufey, unaware, could only see the reaction in his mate.  How the emerald eyes grew bright with fiery magic, and how the gentle hands clenched into tight fists.

~*~*~

He was going to kill Odin Allfather.

No.  

He is going to make him suffer.  Death would be a swift kindness.  The monster deserved lingering pain.  

The first to be dealt with would be his ravens.  Said to be Odin’s thoughts and memories, the two birds flew about the realms.  They acted as spies, bringing back to the Allfather all they saw and heard.  He had seen them flying around Jotunheim, trying to figure out where and what they had done with Loki.  They were, however, ravens. They could be easy lured with carrion and shiny baubles.  Once they were close enough they could be captured and imprisoned, unable to return.  If capture was not possible, well, there was a whole growing section of their warriors being trained in the bow.  They could use some target practice.

Next would have to be the wolves.  They were not as valuable as the ravens but nevertheless dangerous.  They guarded his throne and accompanied him when he traveled.  Odin was sure to keep the wolves at some level of hunger to have them so bound to his side, thus, they could also be lured away with food.  Or, perhaps, the scent of their master’s son.  Once close enough they would be set upon by Aruna and other snow leopards.  If the wolves gave the leopards trouble then it would be the two Ísabrotdýr that Laufey still had under his command.  Some new furs would be nice.  

Next would have to be Gungnir, the spear of Odin, and Hlidskjalf, the throne.  Both were objects used by the king.  Objects meant they were physical and thus could be touched, affected.  The spear could be stolen.  Or broken.  Cadeyrn knew from the knowledge garnered preciously from the other realms that Asgard’s position was a precarious one.  Especially now that Odin was going on in age and passing it onto a son not well suited.  Asgard could not be a perfectly happy and balanced place as it presented itself to be.  Surely there would be people sympathetic to another way or those with angers against the throne.  Ah, yes.  He greatly understood the threats a civil war presented to a realm.  

Then there was the place said to be the source of Odin’s wisdom, and what he had given in exchange.  Odin had gone to Mimir’s Well as a young king and given his eye in exchange for one drink from the well.  Mimir was a dear and close friend to Cadeyrn.  The old jotun had been a source of help and comfort after the war and the theft of his child.  He had used everything in his power in attempts to divine the fate of Loptr.  His anger would be Mimir’s anger once the truth was revealed.  To have Odin’s eye in his grasp would be a pathway to power over the man himself.  

Yes, all this would leave Odin weakened on all sides.  Then it would be time to break him.  Cadeyrn would strike at him the very pain Odin had smote upon Cadeyrn, his family, and his people.  Odin had a wife, and a son.  There was the briefest thought that he would kill both right before his very eye.  But he swiftly reconsidered.  They had been felt for decades uncertain of the fate of their baby; uncertain would be how Odin suffered.  Besides, Cadeyrn held no anger against Frigga or Thor themselves.  He would kidnap them, capture them, and lock them away by distance and magic where Odin could never find them.  Let him flounder without a clue of where to find them.  Let him agonize over the possibilities of their death or imprisonment.  

Perhaps he would hold them captive where Loki could visit them.  He had spoken fondly of Frigga, the woman who had been his mother.  From what he had heard she had been kind and loving to him.  Thor and Loki had been raised as brothers, with a more precarious relationship, but still there nonetheless.  They would have to contain Thor’s strength, however, and rid him of the hammer Mjolnir.  

Yes.  All of this was a most excellent plan.  It would never come close to the suffering he wished to inflict on Odin.

But it would be a nice start.  

Right now, however, he had a dwarf to visit.  

~*~*~

Brokkr looked up as footsteps approached his cell.  How long had he been done here in this hellhole?  Hellhole.  Ha!  At least a hellhole would be warm.  There was no light in this place other than when the giants decided to leave a torch nearby.  He was certain they fed him on an irregular schedule.  Treason.  Ha!  Once his king heard of this they were certain to free him.  He didn’t believe what those giant blue guards told him, that the dwarven king had agreed he had committed treason and broken the sacred hospitality that Laufey’s house had provided for him.  

The blood began to heat within him as he heard a voice bounce off the icy walls.  It commanded the guards to leave after handing over the key.  Calm.  Full of authority.  The giants obeyed and left the man alone.  Brokkr struggled to sit up as the key turned in the lock to his cell.  The door creaked loudly on its hinges, ice cracking, and revealed the beauty beyond.  As Cadeyrn stepped into the cell Brokkr did not miss the slight limp in his walk.  He gifted the human with a lecherous smile, but it was smile that slowly faded when he truly looked on his desire’s face.

There was something wrong in his expression.  A madness to the curl of his lips.  An insanity to the light in his eyes.  One hand slowly reached into a pocket and withdrew the object hidden there.  A long, wickedly pointed needle.  The size of which must have been made for jotuns to use in their sewing.  Cadeyrn slowly threaded it with a long strand of roughly worked leather.  He swung it slowly back and forth as he began to talk.

“You know, Brokkr, I had only thought it a very strange compliment at the type.  Do you remember?  The very first time you came here?  You fell to your knees and vowed that I was more beautiful than even Prince Loki of Asgard.”  Light glinted off the needle.  “It became even more bizarre once the news had trickled down what you had done in Asgard, the realm you visited before ours.”

Cadeyrn slowly approached and crouched before the dwarf.  Brokkr could see the end of a bandage wrapped around his ankle when the robe shifted.  His eyes moved between the human’s face and the long needle that he played with his fingers.  Despite the freezing state of his cell he felt himself break into a nervous sweat.  

“To sew ones lips shut?  That is a cruel thing to do to anyone.  But it was even more cruel that Odin, who is supposed to be Loki’s very father, allowed it.  I would never allow anyone to terrorize my child so.”  Suddenly a hand shot out and yanked the messy hair of the dwarf, forcing him to look at him.  “Now, Brokkr.  I want you to think on some things.  Think hard.  Why was my true reason for bargaining with the dwarves?”

Brokkr swallowed.  “… so that you could ask for news of your missing child in the Dwarven Kingdoms?”

“Ah, yes.  And what did I pay you for?  What did you try to steal my goods from me for?”

“That… that we would be your eyes and ears, and search for him?”

“Good!”  The smile only grew as Cadeyrn leaned closer.  “Now.  There is one final thing.  Now think hard, and think long.  You know what my face looks like.  Recall what Loki’s face looked like, clever and carefree, before you terrorized him.”  He shook the dwarf’s head violent.  “Come on, dwarf.  I know you can~”

Brokkr felt the blood drain from his face.  Cadeyrn’s face was right before him.  Loki’s face was easy to recall.  The pretty face had been the one in summoned fantasies before he had first seen the jotun queen.  He had thought it odd for Cadeyrn to suddenly to mention the Asgardian prince in the same breath of his missing son.  Why?  Unless… “Loki is your son… he’s the missing jotun prince…”

“Yes~!”  Cadeyrn laughed.  He released the dwarf’s hair.  There was no reason to hold him anymore.  Brokkr was frozen in sudden fear.  The needle tapped against his lips as the human continued.  “You know, when I heard the news, and when Loki spoke of it himself to me, I imagined all the things I would have done different if I was his father.  Granted, I never would have allowed you to sew his lips shut in the first place, but if you had done it on your own…  Well, there are so many things I want to do to Odin for allowing it and for taking my precious baby in the first place.  But Odin isn’t here… is he?”

~*~*~

Loki had awakened in a strange room.  It was not the one he had spent in his visit here.  Rather, it was one built for a smaller frost giant by the size of the bed.  Byleistr was waiting nearby.  When he saw the prince was awake a smile split his face.  Loki did not think much up it, pushing back the furs and yawning.  “Where am I?”

“You fell asleep taking care of Papa.  Father brought you here to rest.”  Byleistr reached out to pick him up, then thought better of it.  There was a look of uncertainty in his being that had not been there before.  But there was nothing that could stop the giddy excitement that seemed to roll off him.  Strange.  Very strange.  

“How is Cadeyrn?  May I see him?”  Loki asked.  The four armed jotun nodded and showed him how to get off the bed.  He hovered near Loki as he showed him the way to his parents’ room.  It was soon evident there was a noise coming from the jotun in their quiet walk.  A deep rumbling.  Loki looked up at him, incredulous, as he realized what it was.  “Are you purring?”

“Yes~”

“Why?”

Byleistr only smiled.  “I am happy.”  Stranger still.  Then again, he must be happy and relieved that his sire was ok.  Loki felt the same way.  He was glad that Cadeyrn would live.  They found the rest of the royal family in the room.  Cadeyrn bundled in a chair next to the fireplace, Helblindi seated on the floor next to him and absentmindedly braiding his hair as he talked with him, and Laufey standing nearby.  The oldest prince quieted when he saw their guest.  Loki quickly noticed he had the same air of nervous uncertainty that his brother exhibited.  Cadeyrn smiled at him before nodding to his sons, a sign for them to leave them for the moment.  

Loki could feel it in the air.  Something was about to happen.  But what?  Was his situation here about to change?  Had his father come for him?  Or would it be as Cadeyrn had promised, that he would be allowed to return home?  The idea excited him at first, and then…  Well… did he want to leave?  Sure, Jotunheim was still very foreign to him and he could never forget that he was basically a prisoner here.  But he had found himself liking the realm.  Or more accurately, the ruling family.  It was new.  Different.  He had a friend in Cadeyrn; such that he didn’t really have in Asgard.  “How is your leg?”

“Weakened.  It hurts when I put weight on it,”  Cadeyrn shifted his robe to reveal the bandage.  “But I’m confidant I’ll regain full use of it once it has recovered.  Your quick thinking saved both it and my life.  Thank you.”  The smile was soft and the emerald eyes filled with delight.  Behind him, even Laufey seemed to have a softer expression.  He was trying to hide it, hide the way he looked on Loki now, but was failing.  

“Loki,” Cadeyrn began.  He stopped, playing with his hands as he searched for a way to reveal the news.  He only looked away once, but his eyes soon returned to him.  “There is something we have to tell you.  But… I don’t know how you will take it.  Perhaps it is wrong of us to spring it on you.  It might be shocking.  It might be painful.  We deeply wish to share it, however… I want it to be up to you.  I will not force it.”

Loki’s eyebrows furrowed.  What could it be?  Why would Cadeyrn not wish to tell him?  Something he could not predict how Loki would take it.  Something that could be good… or be equally as painful…  Cadeyrn saw his confusion.  He stood slowly, settling his weight on his good leg.  “I know my words are cryptic.  But I know you are bright.  Perhaps if I gave you a clue, you might be able to figure it out?”

Laufey watched on as Cadeyrn motioned Loki over to a mirror set into the icy wall.  How he wished they could ignore this wash of words and just tell Loki he was their son.  But he knew what he and his mate had spoken earlier was right.  Loki was Loptr.  However, he did not know that.  From all that the two of them had seen, Loki had never once found out about his jotun heritage.  Odin had most likely woven a spell over him that his appearance would not shift and give it away.  Loki had been raised in a different world, believing himself to be the child of another.  Cadeyrn was right in that they had no way to know how Loki would take the news.  Laufey had agreed.  He did not wish to cause their child pain, no matter how much it pained his true parents.

Loki incredulously watched their reflections as Cadeyrn limped over to the mirror.  What would he see here?  Was it a type of magic mirror, similar to his scrying earlier?  Cadeyrn stood next to him, almost touching, one corner of his mouth turned up.  As Loki waited he looked on the mirror.  Similar height, hair, and eye color.  If Cadeyrn did not mention it he would easily be mistaken as a fellow man of Asgard.  He must not have seen what the human wanted him to see, for he nodded and reached for something draped nearby.  The prince saw that it was his Asgardian overshirt, which he had removed to deal with the poisoning.  

“If you will permit me?”  With Loki’s consent Cadeyrn pulled the shirt on and fastened it up.  His robe showed where the fabric beneath the destroyed vambrace couldn’t be repaired.  He pulled his long hair back to his neck and bound it with a tie, allowing the shorter strands to frame his face.  Finally, he held out his hand and Laufey set a damp cloth in it.  There were still smudges of the blue paint from the remembrance ceremony.  He stood next to Loki as he slowly scrubbed it away.  Cadeyrn lowered it, and stood shoulder to shoulder with Loki, and stared at him through the mirror.

What was this?  What did Cadeyrn think he was doing?  Dressing in his clothes, standing nearby.  Did he think to shapeshift into him?  Did he think resembling him would accomplish something--  Loki sucked in a breath.  The emerald eyes looked over the images before moving to their twin orbs.  That’s what he had unconsciously seen the entire time he had been there.  When he had awakened for the first time.  When Cadeyrn had bound his hair back before the attack on the bandits.  When he had seen the sketch of Cadeyrn as a young man.  That was why he had felt so familiar.  Because Loki had seen him before.

The two of them resembled each other.

No magic; he would have felt it.  No shapeshifting; he would have seen it.  Cadeyrn had simply removed the things that distracted or hidden their resemblance.  There was more.  The ease they had with each other.  How similar they were with their minds and tongues.  How?  Why?  And… and wouldn’t that mean…?

Cadeyrn was pressed against Laufey’s leg for support.  The eyes blinked to keep his emotions from showing.  He knew that Loki had figured it out.  “Loki, you… we think that you are our missing son.”

“But… but how!?”  Loki whispered, mind racing.  “I’ve never seen any sign… nothing from Mother or Father that I wasn’t their child.  And if I am a Frost Giant, why have I never resembled one?”  Then it hit him.  During the battle, a jotun had grabbed him.  Instead of burning him as it had done Volstagg, his skin had turned blue.  Curious, he had thought, or perhaps his magic protecting him.  Could it be…?

“A spell, most likely, woven over you when he found you.”  Laufey had to keep his voice calm and words thought out when he spoke.  He held of a hand out to Loki with the fingers lightly curled.  He would not force the boy.  Loki had to make the decision.  “It is up to you to see if it is true.”

Silence.

Baited breath.

And Loki reached out his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you see Loki didn't just inheriet his sire's quick mind and magic. AKA Cadeyrn gets a little crazier when he realizes that not only is Loki his son, Odin kidnapped him _and_ allowed a toturous punishment on him. Guess whose in the dungeon?


	11. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything comes to an end when Loki truly sees his Jotun form, and Asgard comes to Jotunheim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! I think this will be the final chapter. I think I like where it is ended, then again, I might decide I don't and come back to tweek it a little bit. Tell m e in the reviews what you think. Like it? Hate it?
> 
> I think I'll leave another chapter open in case I am inspired to write more. I think I will at least once, since I'd like to fill another prompt on the meme using this universe when Helblindi/Byleistr are little and the birth of Loptr/Loki.

It was the worst possible situation Odin could have awakened to.  When Thor and his friends had arrived back in Asgard, injured and Loki missing, rage had steered his mind.  How dare Thor disobey his express word?  And Loki had suffered for it.  He knew his younger son had gone only to protect Thor.  Leaving the message with the servant to tell their Father what was happened was evidence of that.  So, to deal with Thor’s ignorance and pride, he had banished him to another world with his weapon and powers taken.  He would be out of the way and the worry over his brother would add to the punishment.

That was Odin’s mistake.  With such a surge of power so close to the Odinsleep, he had pushed himself over the edge.  He barely had time to draft a message to Jotunheim before falling into the healing void.  There he had struggled to keep an eye on his sons.  Thor struggled on Midgard, as expected.  Loki… it was different.  He expected him to suffer in the frost giant’s hands, or even be killed…  But he was treated well.  In fact, it was almost as if he were an honored guest.  He could not see the person who accompanied Loki most of the time but they were surprisingly kind and caring.

Frigga, the last on the throne, had struggled to get their son back.  Laufey-King was willing to negotiate Loki’s return.  It was, of course, in exchange for the Casket.  If he were willing to barter Odin knew that the jotun had no clue to Loki’s true identity.  Asgard would not bend; however, neither would Jotunheim.  Frigga had wanted to go in person to rescue her son.  The idiotic advisors to the throne had resisted.  They were as willing to follow a woman despite it being their own queen.  So she had bided her time and built up an invasion force while awaiting Odin’s awakening.  He would have to deal with the advisors later.  Thor had also returned.  Something about an alien race trying to invade Midgard and teaming up with a group of humans to protect it.  Details didn’t matter.  Al that did was that the event had proven Thor’s worth and allowed the returned of his powers and the hammer Mjolnir.

~*~*~

“I just don’t know what to think, Aruna.  Everything and nothing could be true.  I cannot imagine why Father… Odin would lie to me all my life, and yet I can.  I want to believe Cadeyrn and Laufey are lying and yet deep down I know it’s the truth…”  Loki paused in his gentle talk to the snow leopard.  The she-cat watched him patiently, her new cubs either suckling or dozing.  He had seen little of Misha, who was out hunting.  He got the feeling the older cub would soon leave for his own territory.  The prince continued on, petting the soft coat of the cub in his hands.  “Perhaps… if I can just hear it from Father clearly… I can decide what I must do.  I do not want war, but it could be fought over me.”

“What is it, little brother?  More sighing?”  A voice teased as Loki released a slow breath.  He didn’t need to turn to see the shadows of Helblindi and Byleistr playing over the mouth of the cave.  Ah.  So he’d been found again.  He set the sub down with its mother and went out to meet them.  “No, just thinking out loud…”

Byleistr only grinned brightly at him. Helblindi, however, nodded.  He understood.  There had been tremendous joy and relief in the two when their fathers revealed that Loki knew of his true lineage.  He had gathered the two had known beforehand.  Something in him was touched at the respect paid by their waiting.  Helblindi was quiet and watchful.  Almost like a guardian.  Byleistr was all hugs and emotions.  One moment Loki could be crushed in a four armed hug and the next with icicles in his hair at the jotun’s weeping.  He begged Loki’s forgiveness, for not protecting him and allowing him to be taken away.  Loptr’s disappearance had truly left a scar on Byleistr both physical and emotional.  A brother who wept over his disappearance…

“So… how are you finding it?”  The eldest jotun asked, nodding to Loki’s skin.

The sorcerer raised a hand, eyeing the sapphire skin.  “Oddly… comfortable.  I mean, I am a skinchanger so I have shifted to other forms before.  It is part of my magic.  Yet then in my mind I don’t recognize it fully as part of who I really am…”  He had come out to the snow to think. Part of it had become a test.  His eyesight became keener, able to block out the sun’s glare off the snow and differentiate between the various pale shades on the snow.  The cold did not bother him.  Magic relating to ice came easily as it always had.  He had thought it related to his overall power in magic.  And he was mostly right.  Loki had said it before.  The children of people who were vessels for magic often found themselves to be powerful users.  And he was sired by Cadeyrn.

“Time is the only thing we can give to you.”  Helblindi answered back.  After that, he said no more.  But the words were clear and precious.  He understood his brother’s need for time to grow used to everything changing around him.  He would not force it.  And by the set of his eyes he would not allow anyone to force acceptance or denial on Loki.

While Loki was thrilled at the idea of more, closer siblings, he found himself the tiniest bit miffed that he remained the youngest.

“Could… could we all speak with Laufey-King and Cadeyrn?  I think I know what I must do… but perhaps I should speak it out loud.”  For once in his life, Loki found himself unsure.  How should he proceed?  Which was the correct path forward?  Perhaps there was none.  No perfect solution where all would be happy.  But he would damn well try.

“Of course,” Byleistr rumbled happily.  “Papa always encourages us to talk with him and Father-King.  We’ll go find them.”  Loki could tell the bigger jotun forced himself to keep his arms at bay.  They twitched across his chest and at his sides.  He wanted to pick up the smaller male again.  He had noticed, all along but especially now, that the frost giants were a very affectionate and touch orientated people.  At least to relatives and one held close.  It revealed the care and bonds that words and expressions might not be able to.

This was only reinforced when, finally finding that their parents were in their room, it took Laufey a long time to open the door at their knock.  He was dressed in his loincloth, tall and proud, waiting for an explanation.  Cadeyrn rode on his arm, a giant blanket hastily thrown on.  A bare shoulder, a peeking foot, a bright blush across his cheeks.  It wasn’t hard to guess what they had either interrupted or been taking place sometime prior.  There was no shame however.  Laufey held the human close.  Cadeyrn laid a hand across the jotun’s chest.  Connected.  At ease with one another.  He agreed to the talk before Laufey whisked him away to be dressed.  Loki found himself chuckling.

And with a misting of tears in his eyes.

The two males reappeared after a time.  While Laufey remained the same, Cadeyrn was not dressed in a green robe the same shade of his eyes.  His long black hair was pulled back in half braids.  He smiled at Loki, gentle and caring.  There was no reaction from him at the sight of his youngest son in his jotun form.  Accepting.  As if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.  Laufey could not hide the pride in his eyes though.  But to him it was the only proof he needed that Loptr had returned.  Loki reached out to take Cadeyrn’s hand and watched as his skin changed back to its pale shade.  Loki began.  “I have been thinking…”

“A dangerous pastime,” Cadeyrn answered with a grin.

“Stop that!”  Loki tried to appear miffed but only laughed.  He shook the hand pointed.  “Now, for once, I am being serious.”  Cadeyrn looked as if he would answer that as well.  He did not but squeezed Loki’s hand.  The words and laughter put Loki further at ease.

He started again.  “I know that I am your son, by blood and by womb.  I want to truly get to know you and where I came from.  However, I have been raised by others.  It was not perfect.  But there were good times, and love…  I want to hear it from them and you deserve to hear it as well.  The reasons why Odin took me and never told anyone.”

“Perhaps things will never be perfect.  Perhaps, no matter what I do and say, there will be war.”  Loki paused and took a breath.  He held tight to Cadeyrn’s hand.  How different he was from the angry boy that had been captured.  But it was up to him to decide whether that change was for good or for bad.  “But I want to try.  I am the child of two realms…three if you count Midgard…  I could make myself a bridge between you and Asgard.  I will make sure that Odin-Father will listen to you when you speak.  It might, no, it will take time, but I think Jotunheim deserves to have the Casket returned to it.”  Now he focused on his sire.  “But not because it will save your realm…. Because it will save you.  I will not have you sick or trapped here.  I want you to travel with me, to see all my favorite things in the realms.”

Cadeyrn caught both of Loki’s hands up in his.  A breathless laugh escaped him.  He appeared to be humoring Loki, but it was only a farce to hide the fact he looked ready to cry.  “One thing at a time Loki!  You’ll be able to take me on adventures soon enough.  Let’s work on setting up a time to being talks with Odin and Asgard—“

A great hand landed on Cadeyrn’s shoulder.  Laufey’s.  The human looked up to his mate and saw that the jotun’s eyes were fixed on something out one of the great windows.  “It will be sooner than you think,” he rumbled.  All turned to see.  The in sky above Jotunheim, darkening for the night, spread the waving and dancing colors of a rainbow.  Each knew what it meant for different reasons.  Loki for he had traveled upon it.  Cadeyrn and the frost giants for it had once brought their suffering.  Asgard.  Helblindi sped from the room to alert the members of the palace.  

Worried green eyes turned to look at Loki.  Cadeyrn saw how Loki warred with himself.  Glad that his Asgardian family had arrived.  Angry that his father was coming to fetch him.  Scared at what would happen next.  Then, he drew in a deep breath and stood.  Since he had not dropped Cadeyrn’s hand the human stood with him.  “Ready, Cadeyrn-Father?”

Cadeyrn nodded, equally proud and afraid.

~*~*~

“It’s this way, Father.  It’s the last place I remember seeing Loki.  I think it served as a type of throne room.”  Thor led the way in front of his parents.  Odin was arrayed in his full armor and Gungnir in his hand.  Frigga had come as well, refusing to leave her youngest son, armed with her sword and the little magics she knew.  They had met with no resistance… this far.  In fact they had yet to see a jotun from the bridge site to what remained of the palace.

A figure stepped into the light at the center of the court.  His parents froze.  But Thor let out a shout and began to run.  “LOKI!”  An excited smile spread across his face and his arms began to open wide.  Loki was okay!  He was here, alive, standing a few feet before him.  Dressed in a green robe and his long hair free-- Thor skid to a stop as he realized it.  The man before him remained still with emerald eyes watching.  

It was not Loki.  But… how could this be?  He looked nearly like him!  A little bit older.  Carrying himself with a different air.  Eyes that had seen far more than his brother.  Movement to the man’s side caught his eye and the real Loki stepped into view.  Thor knew him immediately.  He looked blessedly the same as the day that he had been captured save for one of his sleeves.  One of the corners of his mouth twitched in acknowledgement, but Loki did not allow himself to smile.  “Loki!  What illusion is this? Are you hiding from the frost giants and thought we were them?”

“No, Thor,” Loki sighed and it was in that noise Thor knew he was okay, “of course I knew it was you.  How could I not?  You’re so loud—Hey!”  Loki yelped as Thor swept him up in his arms.  He hung several inches above the floor in a bear hug.  “Yes yes!  I’m alive.  Can’t breathe—“

“Oh.  Sorry.  I’m just happy!”  Thor relented finally and set him down.  He still hovered protectively as he turned and saw that the man still stood there, watching them.  Furrowing his eyes Thor tried to understand.  “But… if not your magic… then who?”

“Cadeyrn, Quen of Jotunheim.”  Cadeyrn extended a slim hand.  While the motion was unfamiliar to Loki, Thor seemed to understand.  For he grasped and shook it.  That was until Cadeyrn spoke next.  “And Loki’s sire.”

“What!?”  Thor demanded.  At first he was incredulous.  Then he laughed.  Oh!  Loki must be okay to try and pull a trick like this.  Or perhaps trying to get even with him for not coming to save him right away.  But no one else laughed.  Not Loki, not the stranger.  Even their parents, who had still not approached, remained silent.  “B-but that’s impossible!”  Thor sputtered, looking between them and Odin.  “He’s a human and you’re my brother and Father—“

“Often loves to hide things with his lies,” rumbled a voice above them.  Thor looked up to see that the frost giant king stood a few feet behind them, flanked on either side by two more of his kind.  Around the room, stepping out of shadow and pillar, was a great number of them.  With one hand on Mjolnir he tried to bring Loki back to the safety of their family.  His brother merely shimmied out his grasp.  He shook his head.  “Thor.  There is a lot more going on here than you are aware of.”  Loki’s voice dropped into a softer, reassuring tone.  “Everything will be explained soon.”  

“But… but how?”  Thor asked, looking to his father as he came to his side.  “How could it be true?”  

Odin took in a breath.  He looked… lost.  He had not expected it to go this way.  No.  That was a lie.  He had a feeling it would.  He had simply deluded himself into hoping it wouldn’t.  “In the aftermath of the battle, I went into the temple.  And I found a baby.  Small, for a giant’s offspring.  Abandoned.  Suffering.  Left to die.”

“No!”  One of the jotun’s next to the king protested.  It was a huge, monstrous thing with four arms.  Both sets of hands worried at each other and its red eyes flickered to Loki.  “Loptr was just a baby!  We had to protect him and Father from the war.  But when you got too close, I put him by the safety of the Casket while I battled to stop you.”  It was with those words Odin recognized the jotun and made the connections.  He could even see where Gungnir had bitten into his flesh.  He had heard rumors and inklings that Laufey of Jotunheim had a number of children.  He had known Loki was one, and now he knew it was three.  For the two jotuns flanking him could only be his children.  

There was silence after Byleistr’s outburst.  Then Cadeyrn spoke.  Loki and Laufey could hear the dead, emotionless tone in his words.  It was used to hide his true feelings from the outsiders.  “So you stole a jotun child.  Was it because it was a baby, and innocent?  Or that his skin shifted at your touch?”  Cadeyrn paused, but even Odin could not hide the fact that the human had guessed correctly.  “So you took him and the Casket of Ancient Winters in one blow.  Did you never wonder whose child he was?”

“… Laufey’s son…”  Odin admitted, looking between Thor and Loki.  “Not when I took him.  Not at first.”

“You knew.”  Cadeyrn’s hands balled into fists.  “And you knew because I was the one who told you.”  Laufey’s eyes betrayed him as they flickered to his mate.  He hadn’t known.  “I have always been cautious.  It was hard enough for Laufey with his own people having one such as myself as his mate.  But I wrote to you.  I begged you for help.  That our newborn son had gone missing in the final battle.  Had your men killed him?  Had someone taken him?  I knew you read it; I wove my magic into the letter to tell me that it had been read.  You read it and made no reply.”  

Laufey suddenly moved as Cadeyrn shouted his next words.  “YOU BASTARD!”  His mate’s hands caught him in time as he lunged for the Allfather.  The surge of his attack was so great Laufey’s arms jerked upward, taking Cadeyrn’s kicking body with it.  His eyes balled fists blazed white with barely contained magic.  “You KNEW!  You knew Loki was our son and kept him!  You allowed our decades of pain and suffering and lied to him his whole life.”

That explained where Loki’s great store of magic came from in a people whose one power was ice.  Odin had figured out from the letter that Laufey had a mate but that was all.  He had never been able to discover or see just who, or what, he was.  The other parent had been human as well a vessel.  

Cadeyrn’s body quivered with his rage and magic.  His breath hissed in and out of his chest as he fought to control himself.  To give him time, Loki began to speak.  “Why… why did you never tell me?  You could have let me know what I was, and where I came from, from the beginning.”

Odin made to speak, but Frigga silenced him with a touch of her hand.  She faced her son, with her smile soft but her eyes sad.  “It does not excuse me, but I did not know that we had ever received anything that relieved your true parents.  I asked Odin to be honest from the beginning.  Because there should be no secrets in a family.”

“Why then?”

“At first… we were waiting for you to be old enough to understand.  Then it had grown too late.  And when that happened we decided to still keep it so that you would never feel different.”

“But I did…”  Loki looked away.  Away from both of his families.  For he did not see them, but the memories of growing up in Asgard.  “My form… my magic… deep down, unknowing, I felt it…  Never being the perfect warrior.  Never being an equal to Thor.”  He gave a grin to his golden-haired brother.  Perhaps at one time he would have screamed the words in rage.  Now he simply spoke them to remove them from him.  

“We have never treated you as anything other than our son!”  Odin protested.

Cadeyrn shook his head.  “And that is where you are wrong.  I am biased, being blood-sire to Loki and having heard only his side in the time he has been here.  But you must realize this, Odin:  word travels.  Even here, locked in our realm, my many ears have heard what goes on in Asgard.  Your actions.  Your decisions.  Your treatment and values you place in your children.  Failing to heed the warmongering of a child ill-fit for the throne and ignoring the warning of a brother, who spends more time with him than a parent.”  Cadeyrn took a deep breath.  He pushed the rage deep inside, twisting and transforming it.  It appeared in his as a wicked light in his eyes and a twisted grin on his face.  “Which is why I think you have permitted things to happen to Loki that you would never do to a blood-child.”

Gungnir slammed to the ice.  “How dare you accuse me of such!  What have I ever-“

“Brokkr.”

The room turned to silence.  Frigga’s breath sucked inwards in a little gasp.  Thor looked on in confusion, the name striking in familiarity but unable to replace it.  Odin’s hand tightened once more on his spear.  And Loki tried in vain to hide his shiver.  “Ah, yes.  Now my words strike a chord.  There are other events I could mention, but this in particular is an excellent example.  One brother does something and the other tries to help, tries to cover for him.  So while the guilty should be punished, it is the innocent who takes the fall.”  Cadeyrn held out a hand and Helblindi approached.  He placed a small, wooden chest upon the waiting hand.  “So you allowed Brokkr to sew Loki’s lips shut.  You allowed harm to come to my Loptr, to my _son_.  YOU permitted the spilling of his blood, and the scars to form on his lips and soul.  Oh, it was the dwarf who did it, but you worked through him.”  With that Cadeyrn allowed the chest to fall to the ice.  It hit the floor with a resounding crack.  The lid shuddered, but remained closed.

“There is pain.  There is sorrow.  And there is rage, Odin.  Perhaps I could wish the same to be done to you so you would know what is like.  Perhaps I could demand the bloodprice since that is what was spilled.  Then there is also forgiveness and that can be stronger than even the mightiest weapon.  I could forgive… but then, I am just a human compared to you.  Lowly.  Weak.”  Cadeyrn abruptly kicked the chest.  It skittered over the ice and came to rest at the Allfather’s feet.

“And maybe I don’t feel like forgiving.”

Compelled, Odin slowly reached for the chest.  All eyes were on him, even Loki’s.  For he had no idea what was in the chest.  Cadeyrn had not mentioned it before.  The human watched the Allfather, with eyes unmoving and unblinking.  “Gentle Frigga,” the quen addressed the queen, “I have no quarrel with you.  Even at my own pain and the pain of my family, I can see that you truly loved Loki as your own and raised him deep in your heart.  So I would ask only this of you:  do not look upon what is in the chest.  It is not your concern.”

Frigga’s eyelids fluttered.  Her head began to turn.  Curious.  Or perhaps rebellious.  But she steeled herself and looked forward, eyes on Loki.  Thor moved to stand between her and Odin.  Both wanting to protect her should something happen and to see what could be in the box.  Even he, Thor, warrior of Asgard and battlefields, flew a hand to his mouth to keep the bile down.  

For in the chest was the severed head of Brokkr the dwarf.  Hair and beard mattered with blood.  Skin the color of pale death.  The rest of his image only added to the horror.  For on his eyes, ears, nostrils, and lips were strings of rough leather.  Sewn shut.  Over and over again.  The chest from Odin’s shocked hands and clattered to the ground.  

“Now you understand, Odin.  No one hurts my family.”

Cadeyrn took in a steadying breath.  And released it in a slow, soft manner.  With that breath went all his hatred and anger.  A calm came over him.  But in that same moment Laufey took in a breath and curled his great hands into fists.  “Have you said your words, Cadeyrn-heart?”

“Yes, Laufey.  I have.”

“Good.”  And with surprising swiftness the jotun sprinted across the room.  His massive arm swung and cracked Odin across the chest.  The force was so great that the old warrior broke through the ice wall behind him and tumbled out into the snow.  Laufey followed bellowing his battle cry.  Thor made to protect his father, but Frigga stopped him.

“Don’t, Thor.”  As hard as it was for her to know that Odin was in danger and could be harmed, she understood.  “Let them fight.  I think this is long overdue.”

Cadeyrn, having approached with his sons, nodded in agreement.  He watched his mate and the Allfather battle for a moment.  “Yes.  I know my mate.  He will not be as content with words as I am.  You are welcome to come and sit while we are waiting.”  Cadeyrn offered as he motioned to a sitting room with his hand.  “Would you like anything to eat or drink?”

Thor stared.  He then shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.  As if the motions could clear his head.  “I am very much confused…”

A laugh burst out of Loki.  “It’s a very long story, Thor.  One you might as well as sit down and hear.  Although… I have to wonder how you knew Cadeyrn was human so quickly.”

“Oh!”  Thor brightened.  “That was easy!  And also why I did not come to save you right away.  Father banished me to Midgard—“

“What?”

“And a bunch of alien forces were trying to invade, but I forgot them off—“

“Good grief, Thor.”

“It’s true, Loki!  Wait until you hear about all the people I got to meet…”

Loki and Thor walked together, side by side.  Helblindi and Byleistr followed close behind.  They knew that while Loki was their brother, Thor was his brother too.  They did not have to like it, but they did have to accept it.  As their sons walked before them, so it came to be that the Quen of Jotunheim and the Queen of Asgard fell to walking together.  

“Thank you.”

Frigga turned to look at the human at his sudden thanks.  At her confusion, Cadeyrn softly explained himself.  “For taking care of Loptr… Loki.  All this time, I think the greatest worry was what was happening to my son.  If he was alive, or if he was dead.  However, I hoped and I prayed.  That if he was alive that there was someone who was raising him with kindness and love.  I know from what Loki has grown to be, and how he has spoken of you, that I could not have asked for a better mother to him than you.”  

Frigga found herself smiling.  Perhaps it was because he was human.  Perhaps it was due to the different atmospheres of both Midgard and Jotunheim.  Or it could simply be that Cadeyrn had come to be this himself.  In Asgard, many times the care and raising of the children was left to the mother.  It was not until a male child was starting to come of age, or a daughter at the age of marrying, that many an Asgardian father took interest.  But she could see, in his words and actions of the short span she had known them, Cadeyrn held his children dear to his heart.   “I raised him as I would my own.  It didn’t matter to me what he was and where he came from.”

“And that, Frigga-Mother, makes you stronger than legions of others.”  Cadeyrn gave a tiny laugh.  “Oh, I am a warrior now, and I was a warrior when I first came here.  But I have come to learn that sometimes there is greatness and honorable strength in ones words and deeds, rather than brute force.”

“Indeed,” Frigga agreed as they sat, “though there are times people still need to fight it out.”  She did not need to mention the sounds of battle between Odin and Laufey that could still be heard.

“I don’t believe Laufey will kill him…”  Cadeyrn admitted sheepishly.  “Although… I can’t guarantee much else, Queen-Mother.”

Frigga waved it off.  “Between us, sometimes I think Odin deserves a good kick in the rear.”  The conversation between the four sons froze, at Frigga’s words and Cadeyrn’s sudden bark of laughter.  When they say all was well they quietly carried on but with eyes that still snuck glances at one’s mother and the other’s father.  “Shall we start laying the groundwork for negotiations so our husbands will have something to work on when they decide to return?”   

“Yes.  Though I think between you and I things will be far more simpler by the way of common sense—“

“NEW BROTHER!”

“Byleistr!  Put Thor DOWN!”


	12. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since it was requested so much. Might come back and tweek since this chapter wasn't planned out like the others.

It was the turning of morning to afternoon when Heimdall felt them approach by way of the bridge to the Bifrost. Princes Loki and Thor, Quen of Jotunheim Cadeyrn, and the escort from Asgard. Often this group was much smaller, just the father and son, and they did not come this way. No. It was by the ancient ways hidden along the branches of Yggdrasil. The Keeper could guess where a few of the branches began by where Loki came and went, but the only one known for sure was the path to Jotunheim. Loki preferred that route when he travelled between his homes. Heimdall oversaw the path while others guarded it. However, the actions were more for the peace of mind of a few rather than protection. For Loki and his sire were the only ones that used it.

Asgard had been shocked at the return of their younger prince. Not at his state but what he revealed and declared on his return. None had known that Loki was not the bloodchild of Odin and Frigga. That had been a secret known only to the Allfather and the Queen. Not only was Loki the child of a frost giant, he was the child of a human as well. Odin had wanted to keep the truth a secret longer until he could figure a way to ease Asgard into it. But Loki had begged him to do it his way. For Loki, known so long as He of Mischief and Lies, did not want to be a lie any longer.

Loki begged Asgard to understand. He wanted to them to know the truth. About the enemies side of the war. About himself. He knew that it would be hard for Asgard and the people to change their minds. He did not want to force them. But, if they would let him, he would be a bridge between the two worlds. A bridge towards peace. Asgard had remained silent. Drawing into house and tavern and family, talking amongst each other. Loki, their second prince, was actually a frost giant? Was this true, or had he been brainwashed? No, latter could not be true, for Odin, Frigga, and Thor stood with him in that it was the truth. No longer think of Jotunheim, of the Frost Giants, as their enemy? Never! …possibly? Was there even the smallest chance that they had been wrong? Should they change?

It was not forced on them at once. Until the situation was stable Odin would remain on the throne and not hand it over to Thor. The golden prince understood and strove to aid his family. His time on Midgard and the revealation of his brother had made him stronger. More mature. He traveled at Loki’s side to hear the concerns of the people and deal with their worries. For the same thing was happening on Jotunheim. The icy realm had rejoiced at the news at Loptr, the long lost prince, had been found. Rejoicing had turned to rage in some when they learned that the entire time Loptr had been Loki, of Asgard. Not only had the Allfather left their realm to die, he had stolen one of their own! He should pay!

Laufey and Cadeyrn stood together at the demands of their people. They asked them to listen. Did they not have the ultimate right? Had they not been hurt the most at the theft of their child? They had already exacted their prices, by word and arm, against Odin for his deeds concerning Loki. They would not allow Loki to be harmed in any way because of it. Yes, Odin needed to answer for his attack on Jotunheim. Yes, they would work for the return of the Casket of Ancient Winters to restore the realm. But the King and Quen asked their people for time so that another needless war could be averted. So Jotunheim held back their arms but let it be known if Asgard made a single move against Laufey, Cadeyrn, or their sons, they would defend them.

The peace was slow. But it was, truly and indeed, peace. Odin lifted the sanctions against Jotunheim. Other realms were now permitted to trade with the realm and jotuns to travel out of it if they wished. The first would have been Cadeyrn if not for the magic that bound him to his adopted home. For it was as he had told Loki. The Casket, in saving his life, tied it to Jotunheim itself. With the Casket gone the human began to feel the age and pain of the old wounds when he tried to leave.

Loki’s first act was to remedy that situation.

Odin permitted him into the Vault. Granted, it was under the eye of watchful guards set by advisors and nobles who thought the prince would steal it back to his true people. He did not. Loki worked over it. He toiled around its magic and tried to understand it. There must be something he could do to help his sire. Then after much trial and error he had it. A gem worked by the Loki’s magic combined with the Casket that would carry enough of it’s power to protect Cadeyrn. He set the emerald with dancing sapphire veins into silver on black velvet to create a choker for the human to wear.

It had been a tense moment for them all. Laufey and his sons gathered at a boundary between the realms with their mate and sire. Loki presenting the choker to Cadeyrn and explaining the magic within it. The human bound it around his pale throat and his magic instinctively connected to it by forming the faintly glowing lines beneath his skin, imitating Laufey’s family lines. For all his smiles and assurances, Loki could feel his unease when the slim hand reached out and grasped one of his own. He squeezed it and refused to let it go as he led Cadeyrn outside of the realm for the first time in decades.

The looks on the faces of Sif and the Warriors Three echoed many of those in Asgard. All sorts of rumors had spread on what type of man Loki’s sire would be. There wasn’t anything else for them to talk about after it had finally been cleared that Laufey-King was in fact the _carrying_ male (a male pregnant!?) parent. He must be a fearsome jotun stronger and bigger than Laufey! No, he was a human. Human? How could a human mate with a frost giant and produce someone like Loki? But it was as Thor and Loki said. Cadeyrn was a human, whose appearance readily proclaimed him to be Loki’s sire. Why was his hair so long? Why did he dress in the robes of a mage if he could not readily use his magic. Some whispered that he must be the female.

Until Fandral had jokingly challenged him to a sparring match and was soundly defeated by Cadeyrn’s knives. As Cadeyrn spent time on Asgard, both in negotiations and seeing all Loki wanted to show him, people soon agreed on one thing. Especially if they were any way familiar with their second prince.

“By Valhalla, there’s two of him now.”

~*~*~

Loki’s eyes quickly adjusted to the sun on the snow. The change of arriving on Jotunheim was becoming easier each time. He was barely on the realm for more than a few moments before he and his sire were scooped up. It was not cause for concern. Cadeyrn had grown fond of it over the course of his marriage. Loki was growing used to it. Laufey held them close as he walked back to the palace. He ignored the Asgardians sent along as witnesses, who had to scramble in the snow. Thor was used to it and directed his fellows to the furrows left by Laufey’s strides.

Laufey leaned his head close to Cadeyrn and kissed him deeply. He did not need to say anything aloud.  He had missed his mate and was glad of his return. Cadeyrn had missed him just as much. Loki had seen the secret moments of anxiety and longing gazes into the distance in their travels. Loki could not help smiling as his ram turned to him and lightly butted heads in greeting.

“How was the summit?” The king asked of his mate and son.

“It went much better than last time, though I wish you could have been there,” Cadeyrn admitted. There had been a series of summits between as many leaders of the Nine Realms that would come. Its position had changed with its newfound freedom from Asgard’s binding. While a few had voiced concern at their safety from the frost giants, it was revealed many had ostracized Jotunheim only because the High Realm, Asgard, had ordered it. “Sometimes I wish I was a Jotun so they remember our people.”

“But you are a jotun,” Laufey pointed out. With their mating and his markings many viewed this as Cadeyrn being one of them. T was only dissenters that continued to point out his human origins.

“I think he means size and appearance, Father-King. Sometimes you still need a giant to keep others from trying to take advantage over you.” It was true. Many looked at Cadeyrn and momentarily forgot the realm he represented. Laufey had not been able to come this time since he was needed to oversee reconstruction on Jotunheim. But the summit had been more of an annoyance than a problem. With all the connections he had made before the discovery that Loki was their son, with many of the realms they were simply seeing the man they had always dealt with.

“And you made sure no one touched your sire this time, correct?”

“Of course. And as I thought the ring helped greatly.” The two shared a conspiratorial grin while Cadeyrn groaned. Although all the realms knew Cadeyrn was Laufey’s quen and mate, it did not stop some from trying to steal him away. One meeting had nearly broken into a brawl when a representative from Alfheim had flirted with Cadeyrn. Laufey had little tolerance after what had happened with Brokkr. If he could not be with him Laufey made sure at least one of their sons accompanied him. Cadeyrn also now wore a ring of ice and sea sapphires on his finger.

“Loki only tells you of his success so he can hide the fact from his ram that people are showing interest in him now.” Cadeyrn offered nonchalantly.

“What?” Laufey demanded, nearly drowning out Loki’s own shocked protest. “They are not!!”

“I saw. He spent all his time laughing and talking with a Steve Rogers of Midgard as well as King Malekith of Svartalfheim.” Cadeyrn revealed. Loki floundered to clarify the situation. Steve was an ally of Thor’s and Malekith a previous acquaintance he got along with. He had been speaking with them and merely gotten along well. They weren’t interested in him… were they? “There is also Lady Sigyn, a princess of Vanaheim. She privately asked me permission to visit us on Jotunheim. I know it is merely a ruse to see our baby.”

“Not to mention the Ice Maiden, Angrboda, who asked permission to leave Mimir’s abod to visit us. Laufey mentioned. He hugged Loki close and rumbled in his chest. It was a protective motion. “Fret not. We’ll drive your suitors off.”

Loki buried his face in his hands. How embarrassing. Behind them he could hear Thor cracking up. He turned and glared down at his brother over his ram’s arm. “Stop laughing or I will not introduce you to Thrym.”

Thor immediately clammed up. His wide, worried eyes made Loki feel a bit better. Since the revelation of Loki’s origins and mixed families, Thor had hit it off particularly well with Byleistr. The two had similar personalities and senses of humor. Thor had actually requested that the four armed jotun be the one to accompany him while he traveled Jotunheim and learned of its people. Thrym was a friend of Byleistr’s , a leader of a large clan. At first Loki had thought Thor was interested in one of Thrym’s sisters, but had discovered it was Thrym himself. Loki grinned and Thor blushed, hiding his face in his cloak.

The palace was buzzing with activity when they arrived. Everyone knew what would happen today. With every previous visit of the Casket, Laufey and Cadeyrn had used it to restore other places of their realm. Areas where their people resided, fields once used for fertile growing, clearing the seas, or fortifying the peaks. Even Mimir’s well and the old Temple had been restored over their own home. But now it was the Palace’s turn. Their home would return to the lace they had built together and raised their children before the war.

They found Helblindi waiting for them near the throne room. He seemed like stone compared the to the activity around him. He stared into the distance, lost and unseeing. Their fathers exchanged a glance before Laufey set Cadeyrn and Loki to the floor. He seemed unaware of their arrival. Nearby, a great mountain of a jotun began to chuckle. He was ancient, with a great mane of woven white hair and paling blue skin wrought with wrinkles. Mimir, the Ancient and Wise, had come to join them for the occasion. He turned to the group, his cloudy eyes still twinkling with knowledge. “Helblindi has something to tell you, since his mate is having a grumpy breakdown and hiding.”

The group turned to their firstborn and eldest brother. Helblindi finally responded by blinking slowly. When he spoke it was with a voice filled with uncertainty and shock. “Hyrrokkin is pregnant… he’s been feeling odd so we asked Mimir to see to him… but we never thought…”

“Between Hyrrokkin’s age and unset dominance roles, our eldest prince has not been very prepared.” Despite his age the wise jotun could not help teasing the prince. They would be the first grandchildren born to Laufey’s line. He foresaw twins that would bring delight to their family. A bridge, a healing, two grow up in the budding peace. Plus absolutely spoiled by their grandfathers and uncles. He kept his foresight to himself for now. Helblindi needed to learn many things on his own.

And Mimir knew the entire family would be with him. Laufey. Cadeyrn. Byleistr. Loki. Even Thor and the distant family like members in Asgard.

Smiling, Cadeyrn turned to Laufey as Loki presented him with the Casket of Ancient Winters. “Guess we need to add a few more sets of rooms to the Palace, don’t we? We’ll prepare for whatever the future may bring us.” He reached up and set his hand on Laufey’s. Yes. For now there was a future. For their realm and themselves. All made possible by the return of their son and healing of their family.


	13. The Snowfeast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is actually a fill for another prompt, but it screamed to be written in this universe. Think of it as a prequel.  
> prompt: http://norsekink.livejournal.com/12950.html?thread=31191958#t31191958  
> "Would some kind person please write something christmassy located on Jotunheim? Surely they would celebrate a winter feast there too? Love for worldbuilding and kids Helblindi and Byleistr. Fluff me out of my igloo!
> 
> bonuses:
> 
> \+ Supposedly Father Frost in his icy blue coat paints snow crystals on the windows and attaches icicles to roofs.
> 
> \+ Something like the jólasveinar from Iceland as mythical figures, maybe imagined as Aesir who sneak around, stealing food, punishing children who don't put an effort into handicraft presents for their parents, even abduct children.
> 
> \+ Little Byleistr is afraid there are Aesir monsters hiding underneath his bed or in his wardrobe. Somebody always has to check for him.
> 
> \+ The queen has been giving Laufey a new loincloth each year as Jul present now for centuries. (They don't wear socks or ties after all.)  
> ++ This year, she instead finds something unusual.
> 
> \+ one of the kids tormenting some musics instrument and everyone praise him for the effort"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some parts of prompt were left out or changed. The celebration in the palace has more Welsh than Norse flairs since Cadeyrn is Welsh
> 
> = Snærboð is a combination of Old Norse words for snow and feast  
> = Holly decorating, singing and playing the harp, and making toffee are all Welsh traditions  
> = While jólasveinar might have been cool to use, I was unfamiliar with them and instead used the Welsh Mari Lwyd figure. Some of the rhyme-song competition is taken from http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=73326  
> =

Laufey was awakened by the sound of giggles and hastily shushed whispers. In his household, that was never a good sign. Of course when one was the realm’s king and lived in the palace this could have a malicious intent. Rumors and plots against him made in the shadows. But a smile formed on Laufey-King’s lips because he knew exactly what the sounds meant. And they were not evil.

It meant his mate and children were awake.

Laufey flung back the furs so there would be no chance of escape. Shrieks and playful gasps greeted him along with three smiling faces. Cadeyrn, his mate, and their two sons, Helblindi and Byleistr. An outsider might easily mistake Cadeyrn as one of his young children but it was not so. His long black hair, pale skin, and runt-like stature compared to a jotun were normal for him. For he was human; not a frost giant. Helblindi and his younger brother Byleistr were still yet young children but were nearly bigger than Cadeyrn in size.

“Who would dare disturb the sleep of Laufey-King?” He rumbled playfully down at them.

The three laughed and tried to burrow back into the furs. Laufey soon had to toss the furs from the bed so they could not escape. Helblindi finally poked his dam in the ribs as he puffed out his cheeks. “We would! Because it is time to get up! We can’t waste any more time sleeping.” “Why not?” Laufey wondered as he tried to keep himself from smiling. “I like sleep. And there is nothing important going on today…”

“Yes there is!” Helblindi cried, eyes growing wide. “Today is the day before Snærboð!”

“Yeah!” Byleistr echoed, “The day before Snær…Snorri… before the snow day!”

“Oh? Is that tomorrow?” Laufey asked, sharing a slow grin with his mate over their sons’ heads. “Yes!” The two cried, poking his sides and trying to push him off the bed. “Well then, if we need to get ready today, I suppose it is time to get up!”

With a triumphant cry the two little boys wiggled off the bed. The little feet were soon hearing padding down the hall as they raced to be first to breakfast. Back in the bedroom Laufey gently scooped up his mate and brought him close. Cadeyrn wrapped his arms around the jotun’s neck and welcomed his kiss. “Good morning, cariad*”

“Good morning, Cadeyrn-heart,” Laufey answered before kissing him again. Their embrace was soon interrupted little running feet, and demands at the door that the two hurry up. The two leaned their heads together as they tried to stop their laughter. “It’s your fault that they get so excited this time of year.

Cadeyrn only beamed back as if he’d been praised. “And why not? I especially love this time of year. The decorating, the food, seeing Helblindi and Byleistr’s eyes as they open their presents.” The human waited at the foot of the bed while Laufey picked out his clothing. Years ago, when he was younger and first brought to Jotunheim, he had resisted being dressed. Was he not a grown man who could dress himself? But he had come to appreciate what the actions meant. That a great big frost giant would take the time and care to dress his tiny, human mate. He chose a robe that while it trailed to the floor at the hem the sleeves gathered at the elbow, leaving Cadeyrn’s lower arms free for their work. It was deep blue in color and embroidered with pale blue-white thread in patterns like wind swept snow. Laufey worked the long black hair back into simpler half braids and reluctantly left out the gems he normally decorated the dark waves with.

A diamond had fallen out two winters ago into the toffee and cracked one of Helblindi’s baby teeth. The tooth had eventually wiggled out and been filled with its thankfully whole replacement. That was the last time Cadeyrn had worn anything in his hair while he made the holiday treat.

The royal family ate a private breakfast prepared by the palace servants. For all the excitement running through the two little princes they managed to stay in their seats. Little Byleistr managed to keep himself relatively clean as he continued to learn how to eat. While the boy was weaned and learning to use his hands like other jotun, some difficulty came concerning his two sets of arms. He seemed still to be deciding whether to use just one arm, one set, or all four to bring food to his mouth. While Laufey knew Cadeyrn had readily accepted a child with an extra set of arms, he was grateful for the vast amount of patience the human showed when keeping him tidy. There were times even Laufey wanted to plop the boy in a bucket of water during meals and let the water contend with keeping him clean.

Snærboð was a day celebrated by the whole of Jotunheim. The Snowfeast celebrated the height of winter when the air was the coldest and the snow the deepest. Clans would come together to feast on the first fruits of the harvests before the milder airs of spring and summer came around. But in the palace, the abode of Laufey-King, the celebration was expanded by the traditions of his mate Cadeyrn-Quen. There was a celebration that occurred around roughly the same time as Snærboð in his tiny homeland in the human realm of Midgard. The palace had readily adopted many of his traditions, to honor his heritage and allow Helblindi and Byleistr to know some of their ancestry. And chief among them was Cadeyrn’s holiday treat of ‘toffee’.

Cadeyrn only made it at this time of year. He commanded the kitchen, overseeing and making the batches himself with the help of the jotun staff. Helblindi and Byleistr were lovingly banned from the kitchens for their sire’s fear that the treat in its molten stage could harm them. Laufey and the rest of the palace were locked outside. So they would _keep their hands out of his damn candy while he was working._ Mounds of butter made from the milk of auðumblan cows were melted in the cooking pots. Then great bags of sugar imported from other realms were poured in and stirred, around and around, until the mixture began to caramelize. Half the batches were allowed to continue to cook so that when they were poured out onto cooling trays it formed into a brittle sheet. The other half of the batch was taken at a cooler temperature, so it would set into a softer and chewier texture. He would pull most of it until it became a thick glossy rope. For the last he put a little into a smaller pot made for him and invited his sons back into the kitchen. Gathered around a barrel of cold water he would carefully help them pour it in. Helblindi and Byleistr would then fish for the oddly shaped candy, telling their sire what they thought it looked like.

The rest of the day was reserved for preparing the palace for the feast and spending time as a family. Laufey would gather them up and tell them stories. How the Nine Realms came to be out of the Great Tree. Ymir’s forming out of the snow and birth of his children the Jotun. The day that Laufey had met Cadeyrn, a dark haired beauty riding out in the snow on Midgard.

While Laufey told stories or played games with the boys Cadeyrn would decorate. Great armloads of holly with berries of red and white. Over every door and window. Woven into crowns to grace the heads of Laufey and their sons. And while the holly was beautiful, the voice of Cadeyrn was even more so. For while he decorated he sang.

It was in the foreign, lilting language of his homeland. Cymraeg he called it; Welsh. Helblindi and Byleistr were slowly learning their sire’s language. It was not the best idea perhaps since Cadeyrn tended to save coarser language when he was annoyed for his own tongue. Cadeyrn would sing the song and then translate it for those around him.

“Almost there Helblindi. Much improved.” Cadeyrn paused in his song to praise his eldest. The boy sat on the floor, brows furrowed as he worked at the strings of a harp. He had begged to learn the harp after hearing the beautiful music summoned by his sire on it. The strings twanged loudly as he tried again. Helblindi pouted and looked at his ram.

“You play more like Cadeyrn every day,” Laufey offered. The harp had been a present from the jotun to his mate the year previous. He had gone to Midgard to secretly acquire it after recalling Cadeyrn had played it for him once. He was sure Helblindi would be able to play it instead of torturing it one day.

The blue might began to fall on Jotunheim. Cadeyrn tucked away the harp and bundled the children off to bed. Tonight they would sleep in their own bed in their room. The Snærboð traditionally put children to bed early, the little ones told it was to give Father Frost time to deliver his presents. It also allowed parents some private time to themselves. Cadeyrn tucked the blankets around the boys so they would be snug.

“Da?” Byleistr looked up at him with wide eyes. “No Aesir, right?”

“Bylei, I told you…” Helblindi sighed. “There are no monsters under the bed.”

The younger boy’s lip quivered. The large red eyes darted between their wardrobe and the bed frame. Cadeyrn smiled gently at his youngest son. At times he forgot just how young his sons actually were. Their size compared to his own was rather deceptive. “I’ll check to make sure there is nothing there. But why would the Aesir be under your bed?”

“Thym told me! He said that… that they hide and scawr jotun. That they steal your food and try to take you aways!”

“Well, Thrym might have been trying to scare you. I’ve never heard of the Aesir doing that. We might not be talking to each other, but they aren’t monsters.” But to keep his child calm Cadeyrn did as he promised. Slipping off the tall bed he looked under its ice and stone frame. He fingered his knives and demanded “Any monsters under there had better come out! No one frightens my babies!” He did the same with the wardrobe, throwing open the doors and rummaging through the clothes.

“There Byleistr. No monsters. All is safe for you to sleep.” Cadeyrn rubbed Byleistr’s arms. The boy had calmed, but not enough to sleep. “Why don’t I tell a story? No monster can stand being in the same room as a good story.”

The two boys nodded eagerly. There was nothing more they loved better than one of their dad’s stories. They snuggled close as he began. “Once when Jotunheim was young, Ymir noticed that his children were struggling. While they were made for the ice and cold, it is not like that all year long. The Jotun did not know when to begin planting and when the season was done. So he asked for help from one of his firstborn, whom we now call Father Frost.”

“So every year Father Frost goes to his chest. Out of the chest he takes his favorite coat of ice blue. Behind it trails the cold winds that signify the coming winter. He travels the realm, going from house to house to let all jotun know. He decorates the houses by hanging icicles from the roof and painting crystals on the windows.” Cadeyrn nodded to the panes of the bedroom window, using his little magic to nudge the icy crystals to grow into the twirling brushes of frost. He continued the tale, Helblindi fingering his sire’s own blue rube while two sets of ruby eyes grew sleepy and closed. He finished the tale, how Father Frost left presents at each house, and then kissed them goodnight.

He found Laufey waiting for him. Alone. He crawled into his mate’s lap, arms wrapping around his neck. The large, cool hands traced over his waist. Cadeyrn shivered and slowly kissed Laufey’s neck. “Happy Snærboð Eve,” he whispered in the large blue ear. And Laufey purred back the traditional greeting. “Are you ready for your present?”

Cadeyrn’s eyes sparked. “Yes! But may I give you yours first?” Laufey nodded, chuckling in amusement as the human went to its hiding place. The two would exchange their gifts on the evening before Snærboð. Cadeyrn usually gave Laufey a new loincloth for the year, made with his own two hands. It seemed to be the case again since a loincloth was in his arms. But it was wrapped around something else. He couldn’t help noticing the coy, mischievous look in Cadeyrn’s eye s as he handed it over.

“What have you gotten me?” Laufey wondered. A new loincloth was indeed wrapped around it. Hidden inside seemed to be some sort of statue. It was made of glossy, smoothed obsidian as black as Cadeyrn’s hair. It appeared to have been carved after the Black Peaks, a mountain range in Jotunheim known for its dark, fantastical shapes. As he studied it Laufey saw a piece was loose. Fearing he had broken it, he lightly touched the section. No, it was made to be removable… two peaks attached at the base that looked an awful lot like—

“Cadeyrn!” Laufey’s cheeks flushed purple as he held the smooth obsidian fashioned like erect members. The green eyes were half lidded with a slow smile appearing on his face. The pale fingers traced over them. They were bigger than the human’s cock. “Do you like them? I hid what they were from the artisan; said that I wanted to hide something in the statue. I… I want you to be satisfied when we make love…”

“Cadeyrn.” Laufey tried to say his name firmly. It was hard while he was still flustered and with the pale hand pumping the statue. It had been a worry of Cadeyrn’s for a long time. That he could not satisfy his mate and lover with his smaller size. “I don’t want someone else bigger. You’re the only one for me. I think our years and children together are evidence of that.”

“Oh…” Cadeyrn blushed now. His eyelids blinked rapidly. He looked away so Laufey could not see the tears. What had he ever done to deserve such a kind mate? “But… we can still use it… Imagine it. Riding that in both entrances while I ride you.”

The king shivered and his voice dropped to a husky tone. His waist quivered at the thought of it. “So naughty you are this night…” The two had only begun to kiss when a knock came at the door. The two fell to embarrassed chuckles. Laufey hid the second gift while Cadeyrn went to the door. “Yes?” He asked of the guard on the other side, who stood wide eyed and pale faced.

“Cadeyrn-Quen. There is someone at the Western Door. They ask specifically for you.” The king and quen shared a glance. Someone for Cadeyrn? What could they want and at this time of night? Laufey followed his human mate, nodding for the guards to follow them. Others were waiting at the door with weapons at the ready. Their quen looked to them, curious but readying himself for what may come.

Cadeyrn’s voice and breath escaped him when he opened the door and saw what awaited him.

It was a form taller than him cloaked in a pale shroud. It seemed to hover above the ground, no feet or limb visible beneath it. Bright yet tattered ribbons trailed down from its head. And its head was the skull and lower jaw of a mare. Its blank sockets stared emptily down at Cadeyrn.

Cadeyrn heard Laufey shout behind him but raised a hand to stop him. There was such force in the movement as well as his brief glance that the jotun king obeyed. Cadeyrn knew what this form was. And he was respectful if not wary of it. “Greetings, Mary Lwyd.”

The jaws moved of their own accord. The teeth chattered together. Then a laugh, shrieking and dead, issued from it. The voice seemed to be the voice of a female, a thousand females, all together at once. “ _Well do well, Crymu’s son/Far from home when the day is done/ A festive even I do find thee/ But fate does hang from quivering tree_ ”

“ _Mari Lwyd, come rest thy soul/ From cold and snow and toll/ For mate and I and our sons too/ Would have food and drink to offer you_ ” Cadeyrn continued the puzzling exchange. He swept his arm over the room as a motion to invite the creature in. It clattered its teeth once more in amusement. It followed the human’s invitation, floating over the threshold and into the palace. Cadeyrn drew close to Laufey in the precious silent moments, eyes pleading. “Laufey, I can handle her and keep us safe. Please, do as I ask. No one is to speak but I.”

Cadeyrn led the specter to the table and indicated for someone to pull out the chair. Despite that it was made for a giant, the shrouded figure did not protest. It merely floated into place. Laufey helped Cadeyrn into his own chair. Once everyone was settled Mari Lwyd’s skull slowly turned to the human. “ _Cadeyrn, dear, you are hard to find/ Living afar with others not your kind/ Yet for all it seems to me/ You life is content with your dear giant he_ ”

“ _Old Mari Lwyd all this is true/ But this seems a thing most odd to pursue/ For it takes great power to come here/ Never yet before appearing in previous year_ ” The quen turned to one of the servants nearby. “Bring food and drink for a comfortable meal/ And with good talk the night shall reveal /While our guest tells of her ordeal”

The jotuns did as he asked. With two young princes in the castle the kitchen was skilled in whipping up something to eat at a moment’s notice. While they waited Laufey tried to figure out just what the creature was. Cadeyrn knew it. And it knew Cadeyrn. He did know that the creature had known him from his home world since it spoke of knowing him from before. Was it a creature, a monster of his old kingdom? Cadeyrn’s worlds seemed to both empower and comfort the creature. She began in a low, mournful voice, “ _Heavy with foal two thousand years/ Bridled with sorrow, saddled with fears/ I cantered through pastures of tremble and quake/ Galloped the track between sleep and awake/ Seeking the deep of welcome, and stint for my tears/ But you let me in!”_

Food was set before them on the table. Cadeyrn himself reached across and poured Mari Lwyd her drink. It was not the iced wine of the main pitcher, but the clear water of the secondary. Where one might have seen it an insult for her it was an honor. The glass floated to its bony jaw and poured into its nonexistent throat. Where one might have thought it would drip onto the chair below the water never appeared. “ _Mare-headed Queen, dear Mari-Lwyd/ Mother of all the herds/ Bridled with starlight, saddled with gold/ Leaping divide between living and dead/ Quickening the year with a toss of the head/ The life of the land wherever you tread_ ” Laufey could gather that there was a purpose to this pattern of speech between the two.

“ _Mother of rival creed, entered my stable to cry her need/ With ropes I was dragged before the birthing bleed/Aching with foal I was heaved to the door/ Heavy with child I never bore/ Forced into darkness they’ve made a fiend/ Bridled with shadow, saddled with scream_ ” Mari Lwyd’s voice climbed higher and higher until it was the scream of an entire herd. “ _From window to window traversing the night/ My face in the glass of shuddering light/ Seeking that deep of welcome, befitting a Queen/ A place of safe birth mine to glean”_

Silence settled over the room. Despite the realm of their birth, every occupant felt the temperature drop. Ice. Cold. Emerald eyes widened ever so slightly before his face became impassive. Laufey knew that look. Cadeyrn had realized something, and he was going to use it. “ _From want and tradition here you have come/ The ache of imminent foal a constant thrum/ But while it may seem like deep frozen earth/ Mate and children and I offer you a place to birth_ ”

At the final word a blast of wind shot through the room. It creaked at the windows and rattled the doors. Cadeyrn shield his face from it as Laufey protectively wrapped around him. The wind died away only to be replaced by the tinking of fine bones. When the human looked for its source he saw that small bones were slipping out from beneath the shroud. The skeleton of a little foal. It’s empty eyes looked around the room before nibbling at its mother. Without warning Mari Lwyd was suddenly floating before the quen, her ivory nostrils inches from his face. “ _I may be a mother, I may be a fiend/ The end itself, a mere messenger, no one has gleaned/ That child would have never lived to be cleaned/For this kindness I cannot allow you to grieve/ A gift to gift the only offered reprieve/ Only my child and I shall take our leave_ ”

And that was the end. The two specters floated to the ground and through the door a guard scrambled to open. The king and quen stood at the door watching the two disappear into the swirling snow. Once they were out of sight all jotun present turned to the human. He explained in a quiet voice gaining strength just who their guest had been. Mari Lwyd, or the Grey Mare, had been part of his winter tradition back in Crymu in Midgard. There, however, she had not been alive. A mare’s skull was paraded on a stick, beribboned along with a veil or shroud, accompanied by a rowdy group of celebrators. Mari Lwyd would visit each house, and the two would participate in a short battle of rhyme-verse. If the house won it meant good luck for the year. It they lost Mari Lwyd, or rather her party, would be invited into the house for food and drink. This had been somewhat the Mari Lwyd that Cadeyrn remembered from growing up and yet not. He had sensed an air of danger around the specter and had not wanted to risk his household should she be insulted and turned away.

They had just gotten to sleep when Cadeyrn startled awake. Laufey was curled around him, clutching at his belly and screaming in pain. One look on his face and he knew something was wrong. Laufey was pale and sweating, and in worse pain then he had ever seen him after battle or birthing their sons. He screamed for the guards while he wiggled out of where the jotun was nearly crushing him. “Come on Laufey. Stay with me. What’s wrong? What hurts?” When he finally convinced his mate to roll onto his back a thick, iron smell slammed into his nose. Blood. Laufey was bleeding, and bleeding from his birthing canal.

One of the guards must have seen it for the next Cadeyrn knew a healer was kneeling between Laufey’s legs. “I do not know what triggered this,” she explained to her frantic quen, “but I believe the king is miscarrying a pregnancy.”

“Miscarry?... Pregnancy?” The words didn’t seem to register in Cadeyrn’s mind. Laufey was pregnant? But there weren’t any signs at all. And for it to happen now, they were losing the pregnancy before it had ever really began. The human looked up to his mate, who watched his face with pain glazed eyes. The muscle contracted over his stomach and Laufey instinctively bore down. “He’s in labor?”

“Yes. His body is trying to expel it. At this point it wouldn’t be formed very much, but whatever happened is tearing at his womb to cause this much bleeding.” She barked orders over her shoulder to her helpers as they arrived. She laid her hand on Laufey’s abdomen, talking gently to him to have him hold back on pushing. She feared that if he continued to push the tears would become worse. Cadeyrn knew he couldn’t stop. He had been with him when he had birthed Helblindi and Byleistr. Cold sweat beaded on his mate’s forehead as he gave over to instinct. He wrapped his hand over one of Laufey’s fingers as they clutched at the blanket. He should move. He knew he should move to sit by the jotun’s side or shoulders. But he couldn’t. Whatever came out would be dead and illformed. But Cadeyrn knew if he didn’t see it part of him would never really believe the baby had died.

It was all very different from that.

The healer had turned to make sure a mixture of herbs to slow the bleeding was made properly when Cadeyrn saw a flash of pale blue. A quick second out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look. A tiny baby slipping out of the birth canal bigger than it. Instinctively Cadeyrn reached out to catch it and found himself holding the most perfectly formed little baby. Emerald eyes blinked. What had just happened? He could hear people speaking as if from under water, he could feel cold hands trying to touch him. Then, in the distance, he heard the rattle of Mari Lwyd’s dead teeth.

“My quen, please, you shouldn’t look at it.” Cadeyrn realized the healer was speaking. He clutched the baby closer. In that moment the newborn let out a great wail. It shot off the ice and silenced everyone it fell upon. A tiny fist clutched desperately as Cadeyrn’s bloody shirt, frightened that he would be taken away.

“Ca..de…?” Laufey’s fingers brushed against him. Cadeyrn scooted closer, leaning around his bent leg so his mate could see. Laufey blinked slowly at the baby before a weak smile cracked his lips. “They’re alive, Laufey. It’s… it’s a boy.”

“But he’s so small!” “He can’t be alive!” “How could a baby that small survive outside the womb?”

Cadeyrn turned to those who had spoke. His eyes were narrow and hard. They might have a right to worry, but not so loud for Laufey to hear after such an ordeal. “He’s not tiny. In fact, human babies are always about this size. I was too.” The healer waved the disbelievers away, still working to stop the bleeding. Another healer came to check on the newly born prince. He finally convinced Cadeyrn that all he would do was check on the baby’s health and give him a quick bath. Cadeyrn sat in a daze by Laufey’s side. Had this really just happened? Had Laufey truly given birth to a child they weren’t even aware they were pregnant with, on Snærboð Eve no less? Or was this all a strange dream brought on Mari Lwyd’s strange visit.

Mari Lwyd!

Cadeyrn’s throat closed tight as it finally clicked. The specter’s visit. Her cryptic words of death and survival. She had been speaking of their soon to arrive newborn son! Something was fated to go wrong with the birth, unnoticed since it was so small compared to jotun pregnancies. Their son would have died, and Laufey potentially along with him. But by inviting her into their home, and by beating her at the rhyme-song, Cadeyrn had prevented it. He had kept Mari Lwyd from taking them, or the Mare had convinced Death to spare them. He held tight to Laufey’s hand, silent as someone wrapped a clean robe around him.

The healers finally stopped the bleeding. They said that they would work on repairing the damage but Cadeyrn saw something in their faces. Laufey would live. That was certain. But something else was not. They did not tell him straight away but rather set the now clean and blanketed newborn back in the human’s arms. He had cried the entire time he was checked and bathed. Now safe and sound in his sire’s arms he quieted, opening bright red eyes to the world.

“Look at our surprise Laufey…” Cadeyrn leaned against his mate’s shoulder. Laufey turned his head to better gaze upon his son. He was so… tiny! He tucked right into Cadeyrn’s arms like he was made for them. It was indeed their child. Laufey could see his family lines faintly on the child’s skin, and Cadeyrn in the look of his eyes. He rumbled softly at the baby and the baby cooed back. “He was unharmed by the sudden birth. He has all his fingers and toes and look at this mop of hair!” Cadeyrn pushed the baby’s blanket aside so he could see. As Cadeyrn touched the newborn, cupping his head to pet his hair or touching his chest to feel him breath, a change spread over him. Sapphire skin bled away from the touch to be replaced by skin the same pale as his sire. The black down of hair remained and ruby eyes turned to emeralds as the transformation was complete. What now rested in his mate’s arms could only be what Cadeyrn must have looked like as a baby.

“A skinchanger,” the jotun whispered around them. Pride welled up in Laufey’s chest. Newly arrived in this world and the baby was already claiming his place. He knew who his sire and his dam were; why else would he only settle at their touch and voice? So tiny. So perfect. The newborn yawned and snuggled closer to his sire’s chest, mouth puckering and seeking. With Cadeyrn’s help the two supported the newborn on Laufey’s chest so he could nurse. Soon, with belly full and cool-warmth of his fathers near, the child slept.

With the child curled in Cadeyrn’s arm and the human curled in Laufey’s, the two turned to the healer. “Laufey-King, you were indeed carrying a full pregnancy. The human blood must have been stronger this time, for his size to escape notice. When the contractions started, they must have been so powerful compared to what a human baby is needed to be born, everything ripped from the walls of the womb. While the boy is healthy I cannot say to your womb. We have managed to stop the bleeding and heal most of the damage, however… in all likelihood you will not be able to carry a child again.”

The king and quen of Jotunheim shared a quiet look. This little baby had been a surprise. They had never really discussed more children after Byleistr. “And Laufey’s health?” Cadeyrn asked his greater concern. The healer smiled. “You’ll feel weak and need a few days to recover. But you will recover. With. _Rest_. Clear?”

Laufey nodded sleepily. Cadeyrn smiled in agreement before leaning close to kiss his cheek. “We’ll be very sure to keep him cozy in bed. I have been wondering how to get you to slow down.” Laufey’s only reply was to snuggle him close. He closed his eyes in contentment as he tucked them between his shoulder and chin. “Why don’t you… chose a name, Cade. You… caught him as he… came into the world.”

“Loptr. Why don’t we name him Loptr?”

~*~*~

“But… Father Frost doesn’t bring babies!” Byleistr said as he peeked at the baby. “Crëyr’glas brings the babies.”

“Maybe he just came with Father Frost to spend the feastday with us.” Helblindi offered. He stood protectively next his sire as they looked on their new little brother. Loptr had been a sudden but delightful surprise for the boys when they had awakened the morning of the celebration. He was tinier than even Father! But he was bright and chubby, cooing up at them when they looked over the blankets.

Loptr giggled as four sets of fingers wiggled above him. He gummed at a fist while trying to catch them with the other. Bright eyes looked up to Cadeyrn, smiling a baby’s smile as emerald eyes caught each other. He was wrapped in his own baby blanket that his sire had just finished for him. The four sat towards the end of the bed, talking and playing with each other. At the head of the bed, propped up with pillows, Laufey sketched them. He was slowly gaining strength and his color was much improved. “He’s going to be the fall of many with that smile.”

“But Laufey…” Cadeyrn answered, “you just said that he has the same smile as me~”

“This is also true.” Large fingers moved deftly, shading in his mate’s dark hair. He liked how this one was turning out. It would make a wonderful portrait of the entire royal family. He’d have to sketch in himself later of course. And gather the material for paint, carve a frame. After finishing Loptr’s cradle of course. “Who wouldn’t want to fall in love with our boys?”

Cadeyrn laughed. A warm sound that continued as the two oldest boys tumbled down to the blankets in a sudden wrestling match. He leaned the baby against his chest to watch. Loptr, however, was more interested in burying his hands in Cadeyrn’s long hair. The baby made little noises against his collarbone. For the abrupt danger of his arrival the baby couldn’t be happier.

“I have been thinking, Cadeyrn.” Laufey began as he set his work on the bedside table. “That perhaps we should begin making a stronger connection with Midgard.”

“With Midgard?” The suggestion surprised him. Despite the fact that it was his home, he had been unable to make many visits. Recovering from his brush with death. Becoming a father to Helblindi and then Byleistr. Then when he had finally found both the time and courage to return home, only to find that time flowed so differently between the realms that the world he knew was gone.

“Yes. I… this event has given me time to think. I was wrong to keep you here; to not tell you there was a way to visit your home. I was so worried that you would leave, that you would fling yourself into war or revenge. But it’s your home, just as Jotunheim is mine. You have brought so much to my realm. And our boys deserve to know the land and people from which their sire comes.”

It was a lot for Laufey to admit. There was truth in his words. Cadeyrn had been younger when he had arrived in Jotunheim, felled in war and saved by Laufey’s love and the Casket. There was resentment that even Cadeyrn couldn’t hide at the fact he had all been kidnapped at the time even if that meant he survived. But the anger had faded with time and Laufey forgiven. He had watched Cadeyrn on Snærboð, the feast day and the morning after Loptr’s birth. He had excitedly introduced the new baby to Helblindi and Byleistr, and then to all the members of the palace. While Laufey had remained home resting with the boys, Cadeyrn had gone to the festival to explain what had happened and introduce Jotunheim to her tiniest prince. The sight of his mate constantly with the child in his arms made Laufey’s heart flutter. Of course, Cadeyrn had held their first two children. But with the difference in size between human and jotun he had to heft Helblindi and Byleistr even as newborns. Even now the boys, not very many years old in the long lives that lay ahead of them, were bigger than their sire. Yet Loptr… Loptr was small. He tucked into Cadeyrn’s arms just as Cadeyrn tucked into Laufey’s. The jotun king adored holding his mate so it was not a stretch of the imagination Cadeyrn enjoyed doing the same.

Cadeyrn carefully made his way up the bed. The wrestling match was quickly growing more intense. Each boy yelped out for their sire to aid their side. The human gently handed over the newborn before bounding into the tustle. Laufey sighed at them before gazing at Loptr. He fit into the palm of one hand. The tip of one finger gently touched the little tummy and began to rub, comforting and tickling at the same time. The baby shrieked with laughter before tiny fists thumped against it.

The laughter of love and family filled the room where warmth resided.


End file.
